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
When Laurie Anderson was asked, at the media preview for her recently opened exhibition at the Hirshhorn, how it felt to see more than fifty works from across her renowned career gathered in a single place, she paused, and then offered a characteristically disarming response. “You think you have a brand-new idea,” she said, and seemed to smile behind her mask. “And then you think, I had that idea forty years ago.”