An Evening with Laurie Anderson
FREE
Free passes for this event have been claimed. Take heart! Our walk-up line will open at 5 pm on the Plaza. We’ll try our best to welcome everyone who shows up.
This in-person program is expected to be at capacity.
Questions? Email Hirshhornexperience@si.edu
Hirshhorn Insiders, email HMSGdevelopment@si.edu
Grammy Award-winning musician and artist Laurie Anderson returns to the Hirshhorn Plaza for an intimate one-night only performance with composer and jazz musician Doug Wieselman. Anderson’s immersive, site-specific installation Four Talks, currently on view at the Museum, was a highlight of her recent exhibition Laurie Anderson: The Weather and showcases the artist’s multifaceted artistic practice.
Additionally, as part of the evening, Anderson will share insights into her recent publication The Art of the Straight Line by Lou Reed, a compilation of Reed’s writings on Tai Chi, music, and meditation. Reed, Anderson’s life partner and husband, was a legendary musician, songwriter, and poet. Copies of The Art of the Straight Line will be available for purchase at the Hirshhorn bookstore prior to the program.
Laurie Anderson VIP Limited Edition Package
$2,500
VIP ticket buyers will be treated to an exclusive evening with Laurie Anderson, including two premium seats for the Hirshhorn’s performance, followed by a meet and greet with Laurie Anderson in her Four Talks installation. Ticket buyers will also receive a limited-edition box set (edition of 20) of Laurie Anderson: The Weather. Created as a celebration of the Hirshhorn’s groundbreaking exhibition of the same name, this box set features two signed and numbered prints (each in an edition of 20), along with a signed copy of the exhibitions, companion zine , and a vinyl recording—all bound in a four-panel folio.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
A Grammy Award-winning musician, performer, writer, and artist, Laurie Anderson has an international reputation as an artist who combines the traditions of the avant-garde with popular culture. Her works combine a variety of media, including performance, music, poetry, sculpture, opera, anthropological investigations, and linguistic games, to elicit emotional reactions. She has released seven albums for Warner Brothers, including Big Science (1982), featuring the song “O Superman,” which rose to No. 2 on the British pop charts. As a visual artist, Anderson has exhibited her work at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Guggenheim Museum, Soho; and other venues. The Hirshhorn presented her largest survey exhibition to date, Laurie Anderson: The Weather, from 2021-2022.
Doug Wieselman is a musician and composer who has also worked in theater, dance, and film. In addition to Laurie Anderson, he has played and arranged music for diverse artists including Antony and the Johnsons, CocoRosie, Jerome Robbins, Robert Woodruff, and Hal Willner. He has co-led Kamikaze Ground Crew for over 30 years; leads his trio, Trio S, with ‘cellist Jane Scarpantoni and drummer Kenny Wollesen; and has released a solo clarinet record, From Water, based on melodies he has heard from bodies of water. He also was co-composer for the Nickelodeon children animated show The Backyardigans in association with Evan Lurie. Earlier this year he released a record, WA-Zoh, based on and inspired by bird songs.
SCHEDULE
6 pm | Plaza Seating Opens
6:30 pm | Program Begins
If you have any questions about accessibility for this program, please email hirshhornexperience@si.edu.
(Online) On Process with Laurie Anderson
FREE
This program is online only (via Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook Live).
Advance registration is required for Zoom participation, including the chance to ask the artist a question (time permitting). After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the talk.
By the time most of us see an artwork, it’s “finished” and ready for the world to view. What we often don’t see is what the work went through to reach its final state. What was the initial idea? What did the first draft look like? How and why did it evolve to what it looks like now? Does it live up to the artist’s vision? What was it like to produce a major exhibition during a global pandemic?
Critically acclaimed artist, writer and perfomer Laurie Anderson has a constantly changing relationship with process in its many forms—from drawing sketches of video installations, to improvising large-scale wall paintings, to generating and editing language with artificial intelligence.
Anderson will join Hirshhorn curator Marina Isgro to explore the artist’s process and talk through the evolution of some of her biggest projects to date, many featured in The Weather
“I’m much more of a map person, to see how things relate to each other. Eventually I think it does help to have an overall shape and how you feel at the end is really important to me. But I don’t know that at the beginning, so I prefer to make a map and see how things push against each other.” – Laurie Anderson on the making of Chalkroom for On Virtual Realities: Artist Talk with Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang
ABOUT THE ARTIST
As a Grammy Award-winning musician, performer, writer, and artist, Laurie Anderson has an international reputation as an artist who combines the traditions of the avant-garde with popular culture. Anderson’s theatrical works combine a variety of media, including performance, music, poetry, sculpture, opera, anthropological investigations, and linguistic games, to elicit emotional reactions. As a visual artist, Anderson has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; SoHo, New York; and extensively in Europe, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She has also released seven albums for Warner Brothers, including Big Science, featuring the song “O Superman,” which rose to No. 2 on the British pop charts. She is currently Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.
SCHEDULE
5:50 pm EST | Zoom broadcast opens
6 pm EST | Laurie Anderson in conversation with Marina Isgro
ASL translation will be provided on Zoom and CART (real-time captioning) will be provided across all platforms. If you have any questions about accessibility for this program, please email hirshhornexperience@si.edu.
Image credit: Portrait of Laurie Anderson. Installation view from Laurie Anderson: The Weather at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2021. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Ron Blunt
(Online) On Joy: Artist Talk with Derrick Adams
FREE
This program is online only (via Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook Live).
Advance registration is required for Zoom participation, including the chance to ask the artist a question (time permitting). After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the talk.
Artist Derrick Adams is driven by his dedication to uplift Black joy and culture. This commitment takes shape in the artist’s diverse range of approaches to artmaking, from traditional media—such as painting, sculpture, and performance—to broader creative endeavors such as fashion, NFTs, and community engagement projects. Among his celebrated works are the more than one hundred paintings of Black subjects relaxing on bright, fantastical pool floats that make up his Floater series, and a new series titled Beauty World that features large, colorful, semi-abstracted portraits of mannequin heads adorned with sculptural wigs and eye-catching makeup. Currently on view at the US Embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania, are Head #12 and Head #17 from Adams’s Deconstruction Worker portrait series, in which Adams collaged together wood-grain-patterned vinyl and wallpaper to convey gradations in skin and hair color. The richness of his formal techniques for artmaking are married to the complexity of Black history and culture, with the emphasis on line and color as strong as his historical references.
Adams also founded The Last Resort Artist Retreat, a series of both artist and non-artist residencies that bring together Black creatives for an invitation-only escape from the world. In a swing into the digital world, Adams was commissioned by hip-hop icon Jay-Z to create an NFT marking the 25th anniversary of his debut album, Reasonable Doubt.
Adams will be joined in conversation by Rhea L. Combs, who is director of curatorial affairs for the National Portrait Gallery.
This program is presented in partnership with the US Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies and the National Portrait Gallery.
SCHEDULE
5:50 pm EST | Zoom broadcast opens
6 pm EST | Derrick Adams in conversation with Rhea L. Combs
ASL translation will be provided on Zoom and CART (real-time captioning) will be provided across all platforms. If you have any questions about accessibility for this program, please email hirshhornexperience@si.edu.
