Catching Up With Laurie Anderson, An Artist Always Ahead Of Her Time

Last October, in the midst of the pandemic, Laurie Anderson appeared at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum to recreate one of her earliest works. Wearing ice skates attached to frozen blocks of ice, she played her violin along with a tape recording stashed cleverly inside her instrument. When the ice melted, her performance ended. Bow over bridge, blades over ice: "Duets on Ice" is a meditation on balance and time.

Anderson has been playing the violin since age five. She performed with the Chicago Youth Orchestra, and might have pursued a career as a concert violinist. But in 1966 her curiosity brought her to New York City, where she enrolled in Barnard to study art, while keeping a separate studio downtown. Anderson explains that she was careful not to mix her academic work with the art she was trying to make: "I just wanted to try to find my own way," she says.