Lynn Hershman Leeson

Lynn Hershman Leeson (née Lynn Lester Hershman; born June 17, 1941) is an American multimedia artist and filmmaker. Her work with technology and in media-based practices is credited with helping to legitimize digital art forms. Her interests include feminism, race, surveillance, and artificial intelligence and identity theft through algorithms and data tracking.

Hershman Leeson has been described as a "new media pioneer" for her integration of emerging technologies into her work and is one of five artists that art historian Patrick Frank examines in his 2024 book Art of the 1980s: As If the Digital Mattered.

Early life and education Lynn Hershman was born in 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio. was a pharmacist, and her mother was a biologist. She reports experiencing both physical abuse and sexual abuse during her childhood.

In 1963, Hershman graduated with a bachelor's degree in Education, Museum Administration and Fine Arts from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Career Hershman Leeson's work concerns identity, consumerism, privacy in an era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, feminism, violence, artificial intelligence and identity theft through algorithms and data tracking, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds. Her work grew out of an installation art and performance tradition, with an emphasis on interactivity.

Her projects explore technology in digital media and science. Hershman Leeson was the first artist to launch an interactive piece using Videodisc, a precursor to DVD (Lorna, 1983–84), as well the first artist to incorporate a touch screen interface into her artwork (Deep Contact, 1984–1989). Her networked robotic art installation (The Difference Engine #3, 1995–1998) is an example of her tendency to expand her artwork beyond the traditional realms of art.

Work by Hershman Leeson is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the William Lehmbruck Museum, the ZKM (Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, di Rosa, the Walker Art Center and the University Art Museum, Berkeley, in addition to the private collections of Donald M. Hess and Arturo Schwarz, among many others. Commissions include projects for the Tate Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, de Young Museum, Daniel Langlois and Stanford University, and Charles Schwab. She was named chair of the San Francisco Art Institute film department in 2007. She also served as an A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University and was the 2013–2014 Dorothy H. Hirshon "Director in Residence" at The New School.

Work Early works Hershman Leeson's earlier works drew interest from themes within science fiction and assemblages of the human body and sexuality. After suffering from cardiomyopathy while pregnant in 1965, Leeson, created her piece Breathing Machine, composed of wax casts of her own face with dyes and assemblages as well as the recordings of her struggled breathing during her illness. The recording includes the voice asking the viewer a series of personal and uncomfortable questions.

Alter egos From 1974 until 1978, Hershman Leeson 'developed' a fictional persona and alter ego named "Roberta Breitmore." It consisted not only of a physical self-transformation through make-up, clothing, and wigs, but a fully-fledged personality existing over an extended period of time and whose existence could be proven in the world through physical evidence, such as a driver's license, credit card, and letters from her psychiatrist. Additional evidence of Roberta’s existence included a blood sample, as well as a dental X-ray. Roberta also took part in trends popular for the time, participating in Erhard Seminars Training (EST) and enrolling in a Weight Watchers diet program. Examples include Roberta’s Body Language Chart, in which Hershman Leeson captions Roberta’s body language as behavior similar to female hysteria.

Lorna (1983) Described as the first interactive laser artdisk art project,

The plot has multiple variations that can be seen backwards, forwards, at increased or decreased speeds, and from several points of view. There is no hierarchy in the ordering of decisions. And the icons were often made of cut-off and dislocated body parts such as a mouth, or an eye. The project is said to be inspired by Thomas Edison's kinetograph, a device where a film is displayed on loop and an individual is allowed to view it through a peephole. The project, Room of One’s Own, allows the viewer to peer inside of a box through a small periscopic device and see a bed, telephone, chair, television, and some clothes on the floor. In the back of the small room, a woman appears on a screen and it is there where she asks the following: “What are you doing here? Please look somewhere else!”.

Films and documentaries

Lynn Hershman Leeson has directed 26 films, including six feature-length films. According to Leeson: The film is currently held by Stanford University in their archives, and can be accessed through the university's website documenting the project.

As part of her 2014 exhibition "How To Disappear," she premiered her video The Ballad of JT LeRoy,

Retrospectives A 2007 retrospective at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, Autonomous Agents, featured a comprehensive range of the artist's work—from the Roberta Breitmore series (1974–78) to videos from the 1980s and interactive installations that use the Internet and artificial intelligence software. Her influential early ventures into performance and photography are also featured in the current touring exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, organized by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson: Secret Agents, Private I, was published by The University of California Press in 2005 on the occasion of another retrospective at the Henry Gallery in Seattle.

In 2014 The ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany held "Lynn Hershman Leeson: Civic Radar", a retrospective of work. The ZKM Museum described the retrospective as having "realized the first retrospective which not only ensures an overview of all creative phases in Leeson's oeuvre but also the most recent productions of this innovative artist." While encompassing a wide body of Hershman's work throughout the years, as an exhibition, "Civic Radar" highlights Hershman's interest in technology, looking closely at artificial intelligence and genetic modification. In 2017, "Lynn Hershman Leeson: Civic Radar," Hershman's retrospective from ZKM was hosted at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California.

In 2021, the New Museum in New York City hosted the first solo museum exhibition in New York of Hershman Leeson's work, entitled Twisted. The New Museum described the exhibition as bringing "together a selection of Hershman Leeson’s work in drawing, sculpture, video, and photography, along with interactive and net-based works, focusing on themes of transmutation, identity construction, and the evolution of the cyborg. Filling the New Museum’s Second Floor galleries, this presentation [included] some of the artist’s most important projects, including wax-cast Breathing Machine sculptures (1965–68) and selections from hundreds of early drawings from the 1960s, many of which [were never] exhibited before." 2008, No Body Special, De Young Museum, San Francisco, California 2008, The Floating Museum (1975–1978): Lynn Hershman Leeson, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, California 2012, Me as Roberta, Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków, Krakow, Poland 2012, Seducing Time, Retrospective, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany 2012, W.A.R. Documentary screening, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain 2012, W.A.R. Documentary screening, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden 2013, Lynn Hershman Leeson: The Agent Ruby Files, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMa), San Francisco, California 2014, Pop Departures, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington 2014, Taking a Stand Against War, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany 2014, Vertigo of Reality, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany 2014, How to Disappear, Aanant & Zoo, Berlin, Germany 2014–2015, Civic Radar. Lynn Hershman Leeson - The Retrospective, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany 2015, Lynn Hershman Leeson: Origins of the Species (Part 2), Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom 2016, Liquid Identities - Lynn Hershman Leeson, Identities of the 21st Century, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany 2016, Cyborgs and Self-Promotion, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 2018, Lynn Hershman Leeson: A Manual for Automatons, Bionic Beings and Cyborgs, 1962-1982, Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco, California 2019, First Person Plural, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, Spain 2024, Anti-Aging, Bridget Donahue, New York City, New York

Group exhibitions 2013–2014, New Acquisitions in Photography, Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), New York City, New York 2013–2014, Dissident Futures, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California 2014, Post Speculation, P! gallery, New York City, New York 2014, Women: Seeing and Being Seen, Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco, California. 2019–2020, Manual Override, The Shed, New York City, New York

Grants and awards In 2023, Leeson received honorary awards from Creative Capital The Mill Valley Film Festival, The Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco).

Leeson has been honored with grants from Creative Capital, The National Endowment for the Arts, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Siemens International Media Arts Award, Prix Ars Electronica, and Alfred P Sloan Foundation Prize for Writing and Directing. In 2009 she was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Also in 2009, she received the SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award. The Digital Art Museum in Berlin recognized her work with the d.velop digital award (ddaa) for Lifetime Achievement in the field of New Media in 2010. Her work was recently included in Arthur and Marilouise Kroker's Top Ten for the January 2013 issue of Artforum.

In 2014, IFP Pixel Market Prize went to The Infinity Engine starring Tilda Swinton, directed by Leeson in collaboration with producer Lisa Cortes, whose credits include the Academy Award and Sundance Film Festival winning film Precious. The Infinity Engine is an installation, film and online interactive website. The prize comprises a six-month fellowship at the Media Center and an invitation to participate in next year's No Borders programme.

Leeson was also featured in the Women's eNews "21 Leaders for the 21st Century" special in 2014 for her role in empowering young female artists to strengthen their artistic voices. Her documentary !W.A.R. raises awareness for the fact that the art world is a male-dominated realm and explores the many influential works of female artists over the decades.

In 2004, Stanford University Libraries acquired Hershman Leeson's working archive. Stanford also acquired a collection of the interviews compiled for Hershman Leeson's 2010 documentary !Women Art Revolution.

In 2018, The Women's Caucus for Art awarded Hershman Leeson with the Lifetime Achievement Award, in Los Angeles.

Lynn Hershman Leeson has been awarded a special mention from the Jury for her participation in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – The Milk of Dreams. The award was presented with the following motivation: “for indexing the cybernetic concerns that run through the exhibitions in an illuminating and powerful way that also includes visionary moments of her early practice that foresaw the influence of technology in our everyday lives.”

Personal life Hershman Leeson is based in San Francisco, California. In 1991, she married George Leeson, adding his last name to her own; some of her earlier work is still presented under the name Lynn Hershman. Hershman Leeson has two grandchildren, Noa and Eli.