Laurie Anderson and Terry Riley will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters when it holds its annual induction and award ceremony in mid-May, joining eleven other new members, including Carroll Dunham, Julian Schnabel, Edwidge Danticat, Mary Gaitskill, and Colson Whitehead. An exhibition of art, architecture, books, and manuscripts by new members and recipients of awards will be on view in the Academy's galleries in New York City from May 21 to June 21.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 250 members are elected for life and pay no dues.

In addition to electing new members as vacancies occur, the Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, and purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country.

For additional information and to see the complete list of new inductees, visit artsandletters.org.

Laurie Anderson's most recent Nonesuch Records release is Landfall, her 2018 collaboration with Kronos Quartet, which won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance. Her previous Nonesuch releases include Heart of a Dog (2015), Homeland (2010), Live in New York (2002), and Life on a String (2001), as well as the 25th-anniversary reissue of her album Big Science (2007).

Nonesuch released Kronos Quartet's recording of Terry Riley's Sun Rings in 2019; it won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical. Previous Nonesuch recordings of Kronos performing Riley's work include Sunrise of the Planetary Collector (2015), The Cusp of Magic (2008), Requiem for Adam (2001), and Salome Dances for Peace (1989), as well as a five-disc box set of these recordings, One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley (2015).