Laurie Anderson’s To the Moon does not accept advance reservations. We encourage you to see the attendant at that the gallery as soon as you arrive at the museum to add your name to the day’s list as slots do fill up quickly. Please note: Kids must be 10 and older to experience virtual reality work.

Laurie Anderson is one of today’s premier multimedia artists, known for her achievements as a visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, vocalist, and instrumentalist, and her innate ability to meld her dynamic practices into new and vibrant forms. Her seemingly boundless oeuvre includes the creation of books, albums, and performances that incorporate film, slides, recorded audio, live music, and spoken word. Anderson has long been recognized as a groundbreaking leader in the use of technology in the arts and has developed new musical instruments, including the tape bow violin, in which the bow has been replaced with magnetic audiotape and the bridge with a reader. She was one of MASS MoCA’s first artists-in-residence and has returned to the museum many times to develop and discuss works-in-progress. In MASS MoCA’s B6: The Robert W. Wilson Building, Anderson invites viewers to explore a multi-functional constellation of galleries and installations including a working studio, audio archive, exhibition venue, and a virtual reality environment for experiences she co-created with Hsin-Chien Huang. Taken together, the exhibition highlights both Anderson’s creative process and some of her most unforgettable works.

As of October 2022, works from her recent exhibition The Weather at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC have come to fill one of her gallery spaces at MASS MoCA. The updated gallery includes past works such as Sidewalk (2012), a video projection displayed on the gallery floor, as well as new works such as Scroll (2021), an “AI Bible” created in collaboration with the Art Intelligence Agency and the Australian Institute for Machine Learning.

Further Reading
Interview with Laurie Anderson, f news Magazine, April 2006

Download a PDF of the exhibition guide here.

Technology doesn’t last forever and after seven years Laurie Anderson’s Chalkroom virtual reality experience will be retired. The room, which Anderson painted every inch of, will still be on view.

Principal exhibition support is provided by the Sakana Foundation. Major support for virtual reality installation with Hsin-Chien Huang is provided by The Rainbow Initiative Funds for Collaborative Cultural Project by Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, and National Chengchi University, Taiwan. Additional support is provided by Bowers & Wilkins.

To the Moon was commissioned by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; The National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan; and National Taiwan Normal University.

Laurie Anderson, The Chalkroom, 2017
Virtual reality installation with Hsin-Chien Huang
photo: Christin DeFord