CORCORANDC
#SAYITLOUD @CORCORANDC
Tell everyone what you're proud of. Click on the button above to tweet your own "SAY IT LOUD" quote.
  • December 31, 1969 | 7:00 PM
    December 31, 1969
    7:00 PM
FLICKR
Flickr

Glenn Ligon

Born in Bronx, NY, 1960
Lives and works in New York, NY

Day 3: Glenn Ligon

Glenn Ligon employs the practice  of intertextuality in his conceptual work. This term, coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966, describes how pre-existing texts are transformed into new texts. Ligon’s intertextual works often touches upon race, language, and sexual identity.

View these works by Glenn Ligon. Can you identify the author of the original text?

Glenn Ligon slideshow

From “Melanctha,” a 1909 novella by Gertrude Stein. Glenn Ligon, "Negro Sunshine," 2006, Neon sign, Ed. 3/7, 4 x 48 in. (10.1 x 121.9 cm), Rubell Family Collection, Miami
From the poem 'Recessional' by Rudyard Kipling. Glenn Ligon, Lest We Forget, 1998, cast aluminum or bronze plaques, Courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine Gallery, NY
From 'How it feels to be colored me,' a 1928 essay by Zora Neale Hurston. Glenn Ligon, Untitled (I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background), 1990. Oil stick, gesso, and graphite on wood. 80 × 30 in. (203.2 × 76.2 cm). Collection of Eileen Harris Norton © Glenn Ligon; photograph courtesy of Glenn Ligon; photograph by Dennis Cowley

Education

1985 Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art,
New York, NY (one semester of coursework)
1982 B.A., Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
1980 Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (one semester of coursework)

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2011

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; travels to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; travels to Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX [cat.]
2010

Glenn Ligon, Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2009

Glenn Ligon: Off Book, Regen Projects, Los Angeles
Glenn Ligon: 'Nobody' and Other Songs, Thomas Dane Gallery, London
2008 Glenn Ligon: Figure/Paysage/Marine, Yvon Lambert, Paris, France [cat.]
Glenn Ligon Love and Theft, Power House Memphis, Memphis, TN [cat.]
2007 Glenn Ligon, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA
2006 Glenn Ligon: Brilliant Corners, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK
We Had Everything Before Us, We Had Nothing Before Us, Yvon Lambert, Paris, France
2005 Glenn Ligon: Some Changes, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto,
Canada; traveled to Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; The Andy Warhol Museum,
Pittsburgh, PA; Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; Morris
and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; Musée d’art
moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg [cat.]


Selected Group Exhibitions

2011

The Last First Decade, Ellipse Foundation, Portugal
Human Nature: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; travels to the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
Robert Mapplethorpe: Night Works, Alison Jacques Gallery, London, England
Collecting Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
2010

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; travels to Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; travels to Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA, [cat.]
Huckleberry Finn, CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco
Contemporary Art from the Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York
This Girl Bends: Art and Feminism Since 1960, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA
Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the present, Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain [cat.]
Living with Art: Collecting Contemporary in Metro New York, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY
Until Now: Collecting the New (1960-2010), Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
El Gabinete Blanco, Fundacion/Coleccion Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico
Substitute Teacher, The Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, Atlanta, GA
Freedom of Expression: Politics and Aesthetics in African American Art, Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME
The Library of Babel/ In and Out of Place, curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers, 176 Zabludowicz Collection, London, England
Desire, The Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas [cat.]
Afro-Modernism: Journeys through the Black Atlantic, Tate Liverpool, England
Hard Targets, Wexner Center or the Arts, Columbus, Ohio
Collecting Biennials, Whitney Museum, New York
 2009 30 Seconds off an Inch, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY
Reflection: A Video Program, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Infinitesimal Eternity, 32 Edgewood Avenue Gallery, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT
Exposed: Revealing Sources in Contemporary Art, Delaware Art Museum, Delaware
The Matrix Effect, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Black Is, Black Ain't, ArtSpace, Kansas City, MO
Collected. Propositions on the Permanent Collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY
Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
FAX, The Drawing Center, New York, April 17 – July 23, 2009; travels to the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, Canada; Dowd Gallery, Cortland, NY; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico; Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong
2008 Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, Gwangju Biennale 2008, Gwangju, South Korea [cat.]
Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, International Center of Photography, New
York, NY
Black is, Black Ain’t, The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; traveling
to Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, MI; H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art
Institute, Kansas City, MO [cat.]

Listen Darling…The World is Yours, Ellipse Foundation, Portugal
Here is Every. Four Decades of Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY,
The 7th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea
The Wizard OZ, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
Across the Divide: Reconsidering the Other, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL
Progress, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City, Gottesman Exhibition Hall, The New York Public Library
Under Pain of Death, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
Black is, Black Ain't, The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
2007 Art in America: Now, Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Shanghai, China [cat.]
Learn to Read, Tate Modern, London, UK
Lines, Grids, Stains, Words, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Mario Testino: At Home, Yvon Lambert, New York, NY
2006 Dark Places, Santa Monica Museum of Modern Art, Santa Monica, CA [cat.]
Defamation of Character, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY
Skin Is a Language, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Voodoo Macbeth, De La Warr Pavilion, Brighton Photo Biennial, Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, UK


Selected Collections

Collections of Eileen Harris Norton and Peter Norton, Santa Monica, CA
Eli Broad Family Foundation, Santa Monica, CA
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Tate Modern, London, UK
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, Gwangju Biennale 2008, Gwangju, South Korea [cat.]
Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, International Center of Photography, New
York, NY
Black is, Black Ain’t, The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; traveling
to Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, MI; H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art
Institute, Kansas City, MO [cat.]

30 Americans is organized by the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. The presenting sponsor at the Corcoran Gallery of Art is Altria Group.

Additional support has been provided by Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.



Press Partner