Her films, installations, and drawings have been shown in museums and galleries, including Exit Art, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, two Whitney Biennials, and Walker Art Center. The restored film of her seminal work, Quarry: An Opera in Three Movements (1976), is now available for streaming.
Other site-specific pieces include American Archeology #1: Roosevelt Island (1994) and Songs of Ascension (2008) for visual artist Ann Hamilton’s tower. As a filmmaker, Monk has created several award-winning films including Ellis Island (1981) and her first feature, Book of Days (1988), which have been screened at numerous film festivals worldwide and on PBS. Guggenheim Museum ( Juice, 1969), later reconstructing portions of the work for a new piece ( Ascension Variations, 2009). As a pioneer in site-specific work, she was the first artist to create a piece in the rotunda of the Solomon R. In 1968 she founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance. Recently Monk received three of the highest honors bestowed to a living artist in the United States: induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2019), the 2017 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, and a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.Īfter graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1964, Monk moved to New York City and began creating work in galleries, churches, and mostly non-traditional performance spaces. Over the last six decades, she has been hailed as “a magician of the voice” and “one of America’s coolest composers.” In conjunction with her 50th Season of creating and performing, she was appointed the 2014-15 Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall.
Monk’s work has been presented at major venues throughout the world. Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which there are no words.Ĭelebrated internationally, Ms. Recognized as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, she is a pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance.” Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound, discovering and weaving together new modes of perception. November 20, 1942, New York City) is a composer, singer, director/choreographer, and creator of new opera, music-theater works, films, and installations.