Acclaimed American musician and artist Laurie Anderson has been awarded the 2026 Kyoto Prize. Japan’s highest award for an individual internationally renowned within their field, the award presents its winner with a cash prize of 100 million yen ($897,000 AUD). Anderson will be awarded the Prize in a ceremony on 10 November.
Laurie Anderson. Photo © Wolfgang Tillmans/Nonesuch Records
“Laurie Anderson has demonstrated her interdisciplinary creativity beyond the boundaries of music, visual art, and film through her innovative use of technology, combining ingenuity and wit. She has established a uniquely experimental yet pop-infused form of multimedia performance by integrating her own narrative voice, body, and electronic media.”
Laurie Anderson is an artist, musician, and filmmaker. A pioneer in avant-garde performance and electronic music, she gained international attention with her 1981 Massenet-inspired single O Superman which became an unexpected commercial hit, reaching number 2 on the UK Singles Chart.
She has released eight studio albums and has invented her own musical instruments including the tape-bow violin, which uses magnetic tape in a violin bow in place of horsehair.
She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and was the first artist-in-residence at NASA, taking on the position in 2002. Her works have been shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Paris’s Centre Pompidou and London’s Tate Modern among other prestigious galleries, and she is currently exhibiting Notebook, an immersive sound installation at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
“I would like to express my gratitude to those who decided to give me the great honour of receiving the 2026 Kyoto Prize,” said Anderson.
“Like many artists, I’ve spent my life making work that I hoped would be understood and, above all, useful to others. But to have this dream of being understood and acknowledged is a very emotional experience for me. And it also gives me an enormous amount of joy. I am also grateful to the many teachers who have shown me ways to live, love and make art.”
More about the Kyoto Prize can be found here.
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