Laurie Simmons

Laurie Simmons is an internationally recognized artist. Since the mid-'70s, Simmons has staged scenes with dolls, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, and people, to create images with intensely psychological subtexts. Marked by intentional dislocations and unexpected juxtapositions, her narratives echo those of memories and dreams. By the early 1980s, Simmons was at the forefront of a new generation of artists—known as The Pictures Generation—who exposed pervasive stereotypes and cultural tropes through appropriation and montage to spark a new dialogue in contemporary art. 

 

Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC; the Hara Museum in Tokyo; and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam, among others. 

 

In 2018-2019 Simmons's retrospective Big Camera/Little Camera was presented at the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. 

 

In 2006 Simmons produced and directed her first film, The Music of Regret, starring Meryl Streep, Adam Guettel, and the Alvin Ailey 2 Dancers. The film premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her second film, MY ART, premiered at the 73rd Venice Film Festival and Tribeca Film festival in 2018.

 

Simmons lives and works in New York City and Cornwall, Connecticut with her husband, Carroll Dunham.