Laura Phillips Anderson (born June 5, 1947) is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting,Anderson pursued a variety of performance art projects in New York during the 1970s, focusing particularly on language, technology, and visual imagery. She became more widely known outside the art world when her single "O Superman" reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981. She also starred in and directed the 1986 concert film Home of the Brave.

Anderson is a pioneer in electronic music and has invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows. In 1977, she created a tape-bow violin that uses recorded magnetic tape on the bow instead of horsehair and a magnetic tape head in the bridge. In the late 1990s, she developed a talking stick, a six-foot (1.8 m) long baton-like MIDI controller that can access and replicate sounds.

Anderson met Lou Reed in 1992, and was married to him from 2008 until his death in 2013.

Anderson was born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, on June 5, 1947, the daughter of Mary Louise (née Rowland) and Arthur T. Anderson. She graduated from Glenbard West High School. She attended Mills College in California, and eventually graduated in 1969 from Barnard College with a B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, studying art history. In 1972, she obtained an M.F.A. in sculpture from Columbia University. Her first performance-art piece—a symphony played on automobile horns—was performed in 1969. In 1970, she drew the underground comix Baloney Moccasins, which was published by George DiCaprio. In the early 1970s, she worked as an art instructor, as an art critic for magazines such as Artforum, and illustrated children's books—the first of which was titled The Package, a mystery story in pictures alone.

She lives in Tribeca.

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