The largest-ever US exhibition of artwork by Laurie Anderson opens at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, this Friday and runs through July 31, 2022. Laurie Anderson: The Weather will debut more than ten new artworks, interspersed with select key pieces from throughout her career, featuring her work in video, performance, installation, painting, and other media. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of live performances by Anderson, January–July 2022.

The Hirshhorn’s exhibition uses the museum’s prominent location on the National Mall to encourage viewers to reconsider the sociopolitical landscape. The Weather will include landmark artworks such as Habeas Corpus (2015), a video sculpture that examines via multimedia storytelling the experience of Mohammed el Gharani, who was detained at Guantánamo Bay throughout his adolescence.

"Anderson pushes the limits of contemporary art, from instrument-making to pioneering new and creative applications for emerging technologies," said Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu. "We are honored to present this monumental exhibition, which provides a platform for the artist’s newest innovations, situated within decades of artistic output that have defied categorization."

Drawing on the Hirshhorn’s distinctive cylindrical architecture, the exhibition will be laid out as an ongoing narrative. Guiding visitors on an intimate and personal journey through her work, Anderson will interject at points throughout the exhibition space; portions of the gallery walls will be covered with writing and images that the artist has directly hand-painted. The Weather will debut more than ten new works by Anderson that highlight her unique blend of the personal, the poetic and the political. These include Salute (2021), a new installation featuring robotic flagpoles referencing Anderson’s song "O Superman" (1981). Other new installations include the dystopic The Knife Sharpeners (2021) and the immersive Four Talks (2021), composed of sculptures and texts that investigate the relationship of language to objects. Another gallery will showcase a group of new, monumental paintings on the scale of her large performance works, some of which will appear in her new opera, Ark.

Demonstrating the range of Anderson’s multimedia practice, The Weather will feature video excerpts from the virtual-reality pieces Chalkroom (2017) and To the Moon (2018). Earlier work will include excerpts from Songs for Lines/Songs for Waves (1977), the interactive Handphone Table (1978) and the narrative video installation Sidewalk (2012), a film projected onto the gallery floor with a story from the artist’s childhood.

Other featured photographic works include documented performances of The Institutional Dream Series (1972­–73) and Object/Objection/Objectivity (Fully Automated Nikon) (1973). Several violins and other musical instruments that Anderson designed and altered will be shown alongside photographs from her key performances from 1971 to present.

For more information on Laurie Anderson: The Weather, visit hirshhorn.si.edu.