Glenn Ligon (born 1960, pronounced Lie-gōne) is an American

conceptual artist Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called instal ...

whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity.Meyer, Richard. "Glenn Ligon", in George E. Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman (eds), ''Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia'', Volume 2. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. Based in New York City, Ligon's work often draws on 20th century literature and speech of 20th century cultural figures such as

James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...

Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most ...

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

Jean Genet Jean Genet (; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels ''The Thief's ...

, and

Richard Pryor Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor Sr. (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style, and is widely regarded as on ...

. He is noted as one of the originators of the term Post-Blackness.

Early life and career

Ligon was born in 1960 in the Forest Houses Projects in the south

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

. When he was seven, his divorced, working-class parents were able to get scholarships for him and his younger brother to attend Walden School, a high-quality, progressive, private school on Manhattan's Upper West Side.Hunter Drohojowska-Philp (December 11, 2009)
"Glenn Ligon gets Obama's vote"
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

''. Ligon enrolled at the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

, where he spent two years before transferring to

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

. He graduated from Wesleyan with a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in 1982. Ligon attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1985. After graduating, he worked as a

proofreader Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to find and correct reproduction errors of text or art. Proofreading is the final step in the editorial cycle before publication. Professional Traditional m ...

for a law firm, while in his spare time he painted, working in the

abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

style of

Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...

and

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

. In 1985, he participated in the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

's Independent Study Program.Glenn Ligon
Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York. He continues to live and work in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. While he started his career as an abstract painter, he began to introduce text and words into his work during the mid-1980s in order to better express his political concerns and ideas about racial identity. Most of the text that he used came from prominent African-American writers (James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison). Ligon gained prominence in the early 1990s, along with a generation of artists including

Janine Antoni Janine Antoni (born January 19, 1964) is a Bahamian–born American artist, who creates contemporary work in performance art, sculpture, and photography. Antoni's work focuses on process and the transitions between the making and finished product, ...

Renée Green Renée Green (born October 25, 1959) is an American artist, writer, and filmmaker. Her pluralistic practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, video, film, websites, and sound, which normally conv ...

Marlon Riggs Marlon Troy Riggs (February 3, 1957 – April 5, 1994) was a Black gay filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films, including ''Ethnic Notions'', '' Tongues Untied'', ''Color Adjustment'', ...

, Gary Simmons, and

Lorna Simpson Lorna Simpson (born August 13, 1960) is an American photographer and multimedia artist. She came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as ''Guarded Conditions'' and ''Square Deal''. Simpson is most well-known for her work in c ...

Personal life

Ligon lives in

Tribeca Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stre ...

. He has served on the board of directors of the

Foundation for Contemporary Arts The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...

(FCA). He currently serves on the Board of directors for th
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Th
Pulitzer Foundation
an
LAXART
His Brooklyn studio is near where artist friends

Paul Ramirez Jonas Paul Ramírez Jonas (born 1965, Pomona, California) is an American artist and arts educator, who is known for his social practice artworks exploring the potential between artist, audience, artwork and public. Many of Ramirez Jonas's projects use ...

and

Byron Kim Byron Kim (born in 1961 in La Jolla, California) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. In the early 1990s he produced minimalist paintings exploring racial identity. He graduated from Yale University in 1983 where he ...

also work.

Work

Ligon works in multiple media, including painting, neon, video, and photography based works. His work is greatly informed by his experiences as a gay

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

manCarol Vogel (February 24, 2011)
"The Inside Story on Outsiderness"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. living in the United States.

Text-based Works

Although Ligon's work spans sculptures, prints, drawings, mixed media and neon, painting remains a core activity. He has incorporated texts into his paintings, in the form of literary fragments, jokes, and evocative quotes from a selection of authors, which he stencils directly onto the canvas by hand.Glenn Ligon, ''Stranger #44'' (2011)
Artists for Haiti, September 22, 2011,

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

New York. His source materials concern issues of the lives of black Americans throughout history. In 1990, he mounted his first solo show, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," in Brooklyn. This show established Ligon's reputation for creating large, text-based paintings in which a phrase chosen from literature or other sources is repeated continuously. Smudges and streaks from stenciled text layer until the repeated lines become obscured. ''Untitled (I Am a Man)'' (1988), a reinterpretation of the signs carried during the

Memphis sanitation strike The Memphis sanitation strike began on February 12, 1968, in response to the deaths of sanitation workers Death of Echol Cole and Robert Walker, Echol Cole and Robert Walker.Estes, S. (2000). `I AM A MAN A MAN?’: Race, Masculinity, and the 1 ...

in 1968 — made famous by

Ernest Withers Ernest C. Withers (August 7, 1922 – October 15, 2007) was an African-American photojournalist. He documented over 60 years of African-American history in the segregated Southern United States, with iconic images of the Montgomery bus boyco ...

's photographs of the march, is the first example of his use of text. In several other paintings, he overlaps repeating text to a point of illegibility, demanding the viewer’s attention as they try to make out the obscured words. Ligon’s ''Prologue Series #2'' (1991) includes the opening text of Ralph Ellison’s ''Invisible Man'', stenciled in various shades of black and grey, the words becoming less discernible as they progress towards the bottom of the composition. He uses this same passage of text in ''Prologue Series #5'' (1991), but obscures the words further, creating a further sense of abstraction and ambiguity about the subject. In 1993, Ligon began his series of paintings based on

's groundbreaking stand-up comedy routines from the 1970s. In Ligon's ''Stranger'' series, he pursues a career long exploration of paintings based on James Balwin's 1953 essay

Stranger in the Village "Stranger in the Village" is an essay by African-American novelist James Baldwin about his experiences in Leukerbad, Switzerland, after he nearly suffered a breakdown. The essay was originally published in ''Harper's Magazine'', October 1953, an ...

. This series began in 1996 with selected excepts rendered in Ligon's stenciling technique that gradually reduces the legibility of the text on the canvas. In 2021, Ligon culminates this series by presenting the essay in full in large scale text-based paintings. Glenn Ligon's Debris Field series began with etchings in 2012. In 2018 he extended this series to paintings. These paintings are also made with stencils but they do not reference pre-existing texts, literature, or speech acts from cultural figures directly. Instead the ''Debris Field'' series uses stencils of letterforms that Ligon has created. The letterforms are arranged in all over compositions on the canvas. Though recognizable as letters, the stenciled shapes also stack and layer on the canvas, furthering Ligon's career long engagement with issues of legibility and figuration and abstraction.

''To Disembark'' (1993) and ''Runaways'' (1993)

In 1993, Ligon's ''To Disembark'' was presented at the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

in Washington, D.C. The title references to the title of a book of poetry by

Gwendolyn Brooks Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetr ...

. This show connected the legacy of American slavery to current racial injustices and evoked the recognition that African Americans are still coping with the remnants of slavery and its manifestation in racism.Kimberly Connor. ''Imagining Grace: Liberating Theologies in the Slave Narrative Tradition''. University of Illinois Press, 2000. In the titular work of the exhibition ''Untitled (To Disembark)'' from 1993, Ligon created a series of packing crates modeled after the one described by ex-slave

Henry "Box" Brown Henry Box Brown (c. 1815 – June 15, 1897) was a 19th-century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom at the age of 33 by arranging to have himself mailed in a wooden crate in 1849 to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For a short tim ...

in his ''Narrative of Henry Box Brown who escaped from Slavery Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide.'' Brown was a slave who escaped slavery by shipping himself from Virginia to freedom in Philadelphia via a box crate. ''To Disembark'' the exhibition centers around nine crates that Ligon constructed and dispersed throughout the gallery. Ligon also took note of how Brown was allegedly singing when he arrived in Philadelphia. To incorporate this element, Ligon placed speakers inside the crates quietly playing songs such as "Strange Fruit" sung by Billie Holiday and "Sound of da Police" by KRS-one. Each crate played a different sound, such as a heartbeat, a spiritual, or contemporary rap music. The juxtaposition of all of the songs, spanning a century, is an auditory element which creates a chorus across time, further exposing the lasting effects of slavery. "Strange Fruit" has been used by other black artists such as

Hank Willis Thomas Hank Willis Thomas (born 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an American conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. Early life and education Hank Willis Th ...

in his photography series of the same name. Also included in this exhibition is ''Runaways'' (1993) a suite of 10 lithographs. Ligon asked friends to describe him and then included these descriptions as text in a series of posters depicting himself as a runaway slave in the style of 19th-century broadsheets circulated to advertise for the return of fugitive slaves. In another part of in the exhibition, Ligon stenciled four quotes from a 1928

essay, "

How It Feels To Be Colored Me "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" (1928) is an essay by Zora Neale Hurston published in ''World Tomorrow'' as a "white journal sympathetic to Harlem Renaissance writers", illustrating her circumstance as an African-American woman in the early 20th cen ...

", directly on the walls: "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background," "I remember the very day that I became colored," "I am not tragically colored," and "I do not always feel colored." Ligon found Hurston's writing illuminating because she explores the idea of race as a concept that is structured by context rather than essence.

''Notes on the Margin of the Black Book'' (1991-1993)

In ''Notes on the Margin of the Black Book'' (1991-1993), Ligon addresses Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of black men from his 1996 book titled, ''Black Book''. Ligon cut pages from ''Black Book'' and framed 91 photographs'','' installing them in two horizontal rows. Between them are two more rows of small framed typed texts, 78 comments on sexuality, race, AIDS, art and the controversy over Mapplethorpe's work that was launched by then-Texas Congressman

Dick Armey Richard Keith Armey (; born July 7, 1940) is an American economist and politician. He was a United States House of Representatives, U.S. Representative from Texas's (1985–2003) and Party Leaders of the United States House of Representatives, ...

. Ligon explicitly points out the problems of these visuals in Mapplethorpe's book with his row of textual placards between the rows of photographs. These images, because they were first published in Mapplethorpe's book, had a limited the scope under which they were viewed. Ligon, however, made these pictures public in presentation, in a museum: Ligon forced viewers to look at these images in a room full of others. This act allows for open discussion of the images and the politics surrounding them.

''Feast of Scraps'' (1994-98)

In ''A Feast of Scraps'' (1994–98), he inserted images of black men sourced from pornographic magazines, complete with invented captions ("mother knew," "I fell out" "It's a process") into albums of family snapshots including graduation photographs, vacation snapshots, pictures of baby showers, birthday celebrations, and baptisms. Some of the latter photos include the artist's own family. Photography is used as a way of representing multiple identities through the disruption of images, which expresses the fragmentation of black identity, specifically the artist’s own identity. Ligon acknowledges that sexuality is something that is not necessarily visible, so it can be erased in photographs such as photos from his teenage years. The imagery causes the viewer to imagine other aspects of identity and narrative of those depicted in these photographs. This project draws from the secret histories and submerged meanings of inherited texts and images.

Coloring Book Series

Another series of large paintings is based on children's coloring on drawings of iconic figures in 1970s black-history coloring books. This series began when Ligon was an artist in residence at the Walker Art Museum in 1999-2000. There he worked with school children to color on the pages of found coloring books. The resulting works are a series of paintings and drawings made with silkscreen and paint on canvas and paper that are renderings of the children's interventions. Figures such as

Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Is ...

Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 slaves, including family and friends, us ...

, and

Issac Hayes Isaac Lee Hayes Jr. (August 20, 1942 – August 10, 2008) was an American singer, actor, songwriter, and composer. He was one of the creative forces behind the Southern soul music label Stax Records, where he served both as an in-house songwri ...

are depicted in these works.

Neons

Since 2005, Ligon has made neon works. ''Warm Broad Glow'' (2005), Ligon's first exploration in neon, uses a fragment of text from '' Three Lives'', the 1909 novel by American author

. Ligon rendered the words "negro sunshine" in warm white neon, the letters of which were then painted black on the front.Glenn Ligon: Neon, October 26 - December 8, 2012

Luhring Augustine Gallery The Luhring Augustine Gallery is an art gallery in New York City. The gallery has three locations: Chelsea, Manhattan, Chelsea, Bushwick, Brooklyn, Bushwick, and Tribeca. Its principal focus is the representation of an international group of cont ...

, New York. In 2008, the piece was shown in the

Renaissance Society The Renaissance Society, founded in 1915, is a leading independent contemporary art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago, with a focus on the commissioning and production of new works by international artists. The kunsthalle- ...

's group exhibit, ''Black Is, Black Ain't''. It was installed in the lobby window of the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...

in 2011.Carol Vogel (October 26, 2012)
"New School's New Neon"
''The New York Times''. Other neon works are derived from neon sculptures by

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico. Life and work ...

. ''One Live and Die'' (2006) stems from Nauman's ''100 Live and Die'' (1984), for example. Ligon's large-scale installation ''A Small Band (2015)'' consists of three neon pieces illuminating the words "blues," "blood," and "bruise." Commissioned for the facade of the Central Pavilion at the fifty-sixth

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

, the work has been subsequently arranged in a new, site-specific formations at the

Stony Island Arts Bank Rebuild Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to transforming buildings and neighborhoods in South Side Chicago, sustaining cultural development as well as celebrating art. The Rebuild Foundation was founded in 2009 by Theaster Gates ...

in Chicago, Illinois, the

Pulitzer Arts Foundation Pulitzer Arts Foundation is an art museum in St. Louis, Missouri, that presents special exhibitions and public programs. Known informally as the Pulitzer, the museum is located at 3716 Washington Boulevard in the Grand Center Arts District. The b ...

in St. Louis, Missouri, and the

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the su ...

in Richmond, Virginia and on the exterior facade of the

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sc ...

in New York, NY as part of the exhibitio
Grief and Grievance
The three words of ''A Small Band'' reference composer

Steve Reich Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, a ...

's 1966 sound piece ''Come Out,'' which looped a fragment of the recorded testimony of Daniel Hamm, who was one of the

Harlem Six The Harlem Six was the name applied to six men in Harlem, New York, who were put on trial in March 1965. The media also referred to them as the Blood Brothers. Their arrests and subsequent trial stemmed from their connection with an incident known ...

, a group of young black men wrongly accused and convicted of murder in the mid-1960s. Ligon has created other large-scale installations using neon. ''Des Parisiens Noirs'' (2019) is an installation depicting the names of 13 Black models from historic paintings which was presented on an interior facade of the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...

, in Paris. This solo project was presented alongside ''Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse'' an exhibition centering the models of African descent whose likenesses are presented in historic paintings and whose biographical details have largely been discovered through archival research. Laure who modeled for Manet's Olympia for example, is one of the thirteen names of black models that Ligon displays in neon. One of the 13 neons included in this work reads "nom inconnu" or name unknown to acknowledge the models whose names have not yet been traced. In 2021, Ligon was commissioned to create ''Waiting for the Barbarians'' for the exhibition ''Portals'' organized by the

Hellenic Parliament The Hellenic Parliament ( el, Ελληνικό Κοινοβούλιο, Elliniko Kinovoulio; formally titled el, Βουλή των Ελλήνων, Voulí ton Ellínon, Boule (ancient Greece), Boule of the Greeks, Hellenes, label=none), also kno ...

an
NEON
in the atrium of the former Public Tobacco Factory in Athens, Greece. ''Waiting for the Barbarians'' (2021), uses the final two lines of C. P. Cavafy’s 1904 poem of the same title. In one translation, these final lines read: "''Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution''." His neon installation consists of nine English translations, each different from the other revealing the variations in the translation's meanings and the othering role that the Barbarians were forced into. With Cavafy’s verses, Ligon is addressing cultural supremacy and its dependency on othering relation, but the tense of the lines also suggest a time when othering as a solution has past.

''The Death of Tom'' (2008)

In 2008, Ligon completed a short film entitled ''The Death of Tom''. It is based on

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...

's 1903 silent film ''

Uncle Tom's Cabin ''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U. ...

''. Playing the character of Tom, Ligon had himself filmed re-creating the last scene of Edison's movie, from which he took his title. But the film was incorrectly loaded in the hand-crank camera that the artist used, so no imagery appeared on film. Embracing this apparent failure, Ligon decided to show his film as an abstract progression of light and shadow with a narrative suggested by the score composed and played by jazz musician

Jason Moran Jason Moran may refer to: * Jason Moran (criminal) (1967–2003), Australian mobster * Jason Moran (musician) Jason Moran (born January 21, 1975) is an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator involved in multimedia art and theatrical inst ...

Exhibitions

In 2011 the

held a mid-career retrospective of Ligon’s work, ''Glenn Ligon: America'', organized by Scott Rothkopf, that traveled to the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

and the

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (widely referred to as The Modern) is an art museum of post-World War II art in Fort Worth, Texas with a collection of international modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1892, The Modern is located in the c ...

. Important recent shows include:
Grief and Grievance
' (2021), at the

, where Ligon acted as a curatorial advisor; ''Des Parisiens Noirs'' at the Musées d'Orsay, Paris (2019); ''Blue Black'' (2017), an exhibition Ligon curated at the

in St. Louis, inspired by the site-specific Ellsworth Kelly wall sculpture; and ''Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions'' (2015), a curatorial project organized with

Nottingham Contemporary Nottingham Contemporary (formerly known as the Centre for Contemporary Art Nottingham (CCAN)) is a contemporary art centre in the Lace Market area of Nottingham. The gallery opened in 2009. The gallery describes its site as being "the oldest in ...

and

Tate Liverpool Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corpo ...

. Ligon has also been the subject of solo museum exhibitions at the

Camden Arts Centre Camden Art Centre (formerly known as Hampstead Arts Centre until 1967 and Camden Arts Centre until 2020) is a contemporary art gallery in the London Borough of Camden, England that hosts temporary exhibitions and educational outreach projects. T ...

in London, th
Power Plant
in Toronto, the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

in Minneapolis, and the

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 W ...

, among others. His work has been included in major international exhibitions, including the

(2015 and 1997), Berlin Biennal (2014), Istanbul Biennal (2011, 2019), Documenta XI (2002), and Gwangju Biennale (2000).

Notable works in public collections

*''Untitled (I Am a Man)'' (1988),

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

*''Backlash, Backlash...'' (1991),

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...

*''I Feel Most Colored'' (1992),

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent coll ...

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

*''Untitled'' (1992),

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...

*''Untitled'' series (1992),

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

*''Untitled (Black Like Me #2)'' (1992),

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, Washington, D.C. *''Untitled (I'm Turning Into a Specter before Your Very Eyes and I'm Going to Haunt You)'' (1992),

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

*''Notes on the Margin of the Black Book'' (1991–93),

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

*''Black & White'' (1993), by Glenn Ligon and

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. *''Runaways'' series (1993),

Addison Gallery of American Art The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. History Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...

Andover, Massachusetts Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was settled in 1642 and incorporated in 1646."Andover" in ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th ed., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 387. As of th ...

;

Amon Carter Museum of American Art Amon may refer to: Mythology * Amun, an Ancient Egyptian deity, also known as Amon and Amon-Ra * Aamon, a Goetic demon People Momonym * Amon of Judah ( 664– 640 BC), king of Judah Given name * Amon G. Carter (1879–1955), American p ...

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Texas and the 13th-largest city in the United States. It is the county seat of Tarrant County, covering nearly into four other counties: Denton, Johnson, Parker, and Wise. According ...

;

Birmingham Museum of Art The Birmingham Museum of Art is a museum in Birmingham, Alabama. It has one of the most extensive collections of artwork in the Southeastern United States, with more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts repres ...

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

;

The Broad The Broad () is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that houses the Broad art collections. It offers free general ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

;

Harvard Art Museums The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

;

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, New York;

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it w ...

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

;

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...

;

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.;

Rhode Island School of Design Museum The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD Museum) is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877, and still shares multiple build ...

Providence Providence often refers to: * Providentia, the divine personification of foresight in ancient Roman religion * Divine providence, divinely ordained events and outcomes in Christianity * Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of Rhode Island in the ...

;

St. Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...

; Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery,

Saratoga Springs, New York Saratoga Springs is a city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 28,491 at the 2020 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the area, which has made Saratoga a popular resort destination for over 2 ...

; and

, New York *''White #15'' (1994),

Wadsworth Atheneum The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School lands ...

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

*''Condition Report'' (2000),

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

*''Malcolm X, Sun, Frederick Douglass, Boy with Bubbles (version 2) #1'' (2000),

Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...

*''Self-Portrait at Eleven Years Old'' (2004), Museum of Modern Art, New York *''Untitled (If I Can't Have Love I'll Take Sunshine)'' (2006),

Warwick Arts Centre Warwick Arts Centre is a multi-venue arts complex at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. It attracts around 300,000 visitors a year to over 3,000 individual events embracing all types of theatre and performance, contemporary and cl ...

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its ...

*''Rückenfigur'' (2009),

and Whitney Museum, New York *''Warm Broad Glow II'' (2011),

Glenstone Glenstone is a private contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland, from downtown Washington, D.C. The museum's exhibitions are drawn from a collection of about 1,300 works from post-World War II artists around the world. It is the largest priv ...

Potomac, Maryland Potomac () is a census-designated place (CDP) in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, named after the nearby Potomac River. Potomac is the seventh most educated small town in America, based on percentage of residents with postsecondary deg ...

and Whitney Museum, New York *''Double America'' (2012), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. *''Stranger #56'' (2012),

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. In 2021 it ranked 10th in ...

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

*''Live'' (2014),

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission. Overview ...

Bentonville, Arkansas Bentonville is the List of cities and towns in Arkansas, tenth-largest city in Arkansas, United States and the county seat of Benton County, Arkansas, Benton County. The city is centrally located in the county with Rogers, Arkansas, Rogers adja ...

, and

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (jointly owned); and

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

In 2012, Ligon was commissioned to create the first site-specific artwork for the

New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

's University Center building, designed by

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings, Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer Jo ...

, on the corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village. The work, ''For Comrades and Lovers'' (2015), features about 400 feet of text from

Walt Whitman Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...

's ''Leaves of Grass'' rendered in violet neon light, running around the top of a wall in the center's first-floor café.

Recognition

In 2003, Ligon was awarded a

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative abi ...

. In 2005, he won an Alphonse

Fletcher Foundation The Fletcher Foundation was a nonprofit foundation that supported civil rights, education, and environmental education. The foundation supported efforts to develop a more just society with more equal opportunities for more of the population prima ...

Fellowship for his art work. In 2006 he was awarded the

Skowhegan Skowhegan () is the county seat of Somerset County, Maine. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 8,620. Every August, Skowhegan hosts the annual Skowhegan State Fair, the oldest continuously-held state fair in the United States. Skowh ...

Medal for Painting. In 2009, he received the Studio Museum’s Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. In 2010, he won a

United States Artists United States Artists (USA) is a national arts funding organization based in Chicago. USA is dedicated to supporting living artists and cultural practitioners across the United States by granting unrestricted awards. Mission The organization' ...

Fellow award. In 2009, President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

added Ligon's 1992 ''Black Like Me No. 2'', on loan from the

, to the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

collection, where it was installed in the President's private living quarters. The text in the selected painting is from

John Howard Griffin John Howard Griffin (June 16, 1920 – September 9, 1980) was an American journalist and author from Texas who wrote about and championed racial equality. He is best known for his 1959 project to temporarily pass as a African Americans, black man ...

's 1961 memoir ''

Black Like Me ''Black Like Me'', first published in 1961, is a nonfiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin recounting his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under racial segregation. Griffin was a nat ...

'', the account of a white man's experiences traveling through the South after he had his skin artificially darkened. The words "All traces of the Griffin I had been were wiped from existence" are repeated in capital letters that progressively overlap until they coalesce as a field of black paint. At the annual Gala in the Garden at the

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

in 2018, he was honored by attorney and social justice advocate

Bryan Stevenson Bryan Stevenson (born November 14, 1959) is an American lawyer, social justice activist, law professor at New York University School of Law, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, he ...

. In 2018, Ligon was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

. In 2021, Ligon was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Art market

Ligon is represented by

Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth is a Swiss contemporary and modern art gallery. History Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth, and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by co-president Marc Payot. In 2020, Ewan Venters was ap ...

in New York,

Regen Projects Regen Projects is a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles, California. History Regen Projects was founded in 1989 by Stuart Regen and Shaun Caley Regen at 619 North Almont Drive in West Hollywood, California. Artist Matthew Barney had his fir ...

in Los Angeles
Thomas Dane Gallery
in London, an
Chantal Crousel
in Paris.

References

External links

''Annotations''

''Glenn Ligon: Some changes at Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean - Mudam
Luxembourg''">Mudam">''Glenn Ligon: Some changes at Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean - Mudam
Luxembourg''
Glenn Ligon at Regen Projects

National Gallery of Art.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ligon, Glenn 1960 births Living people Wesleyan University alumni American printmakers African-American contemporary artists American contemporary artists Flash artists American conceptual artists People from the Bronx Artists from the Bronx LGBT African Americans LGBT artists from the United States Walden School (New York City) alumni African-American printmakers Gay artists 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people

Early life and career

Personal life

Work

Text-based Works

''To Disembark'' (1993) and ''Runaways'' (1993)

''Notes on the Margin of the Black Book'' (1991-1993)

''Feast of Scraps'' (1994-98)

Coloring Book Series

Neons

''The Death of Tom'' (2008)

Exhibitions

Notable works in public collections

Recognition

Art market

See also

References

External links