The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Glenn Ligon. America the first comprehensive mid-career retrospective of Glenn Ligon (b. 1960), widely regarded as one of the most important and influential American artists to have emerged in the past two decades.
Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art by curator Scott Rothkopf, in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition surveys twenty-five years of Ligon’s work, from his post-graduate days in the Whitney Independent Study Program until the present. Glenn Ligon: AMERICA premiered at the Whitney (March 10–June 5, 2011); following LACMA’s presentation, it will travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (February 12–June 3, 2012).
LACMA’s presentation is curated by Franklin Sirmans, the Terri and Michael Smooke department head and curator of contemporary art. The exhibition features more than seventy-five works, including paintings, prints, photography, drawings, and sculptural installations, as well as striking recent neon reliefs—one of which, Rückenfigur (2009), was added to LACMA’s collection in 2010 and was on view in the recent exhibition Human Nature: Contemporary Art from the Collection. LACMA also acquired another work of Ligon’s the same year, The Death of Tom (2008).
The retrospective debuts previously unexhibited early works that shed light on Ligon’s artistic origins, and for the first time reconstitutes major series, such as his seminal “Door” paintings, which launched the artist’s career. Loans are drawn from important institutional and private collections, including the artist’s, as well as several Los Angeles collections. Ligon has had a strong following in Los Angeles for several years due to a string of gallery exhibitions at Regen Projects dating back to 2004. lacma.org
Image: Malcolm X (Version 1) #1, 2000. Vinyl-based paint, silkscreen ink, and gesso on canvas, 96 x 72 in. (243.8 x 182.9 cm). Collection of Michael and Lise Evans. © Glenn Ligon. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
