Tag: Glenn Ligon
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Decoding Sunshine-Glenn Ligon at the Broad

Glenn Ligon baffles me—the more I look at his work, the less I understand, and because it’s so layered, I learn something new with every attempt I make to decode a piece. It’s a challenge I gladly accept. In the Broad’s latest group show called “A Journey That Wasn’t” Ligon explores the fluidity of time, race,…
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A Word on Mentors

The artists in this photo inspire what I write. Writers like Holland Cotter inspire how I write. This year I have been blessed with the good fortune of having Holland Cotter, the co-chief art critic for the New York Times, as my mentor. During this time he has been both a sage and a sounding…
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SF MOMA in 3: Part 2
Now that we got the essentials out of the way in yesterday’s post, it’s time to see some art! As I previously warned, I don’t suggest you try to see everything in 1 day. There are 7 floors of art, so I suggest that you pick 3 and spend some quality time with the collections.…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-16: A Tale of Two Countries in Glenn Ligon’s “Double America”
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” As Dickens used literary parallelism in the opening sentence of “A Tale of Two Cities”, Glenn Ligon used a simple form visual parallelism that taps into today’s political discourse in a very profound way. “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of…
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Invisible Man: Reflections on Ferguson
I am not alone in feeling the weight of this week. I don’t think there are enough words to express my frustration with what is happening right now in Ferguson, MO, however when I see this picture today taken at a Freshman orientation at Howard University, I am reminded of the realities of the unspoken burdens we bear…
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2013 Inauguration/MLK Day Reflections
I have been thinking about this phrase for a long time. This 1988 piece by Glenn Ligon was an adaptation of a legendary photo taken in 1968 by Ernest Withers. The original photograph is from the ’68 Sanitation Worker’s Strike in Memphis, TN which was initiated in response to the egregiously deplorable working conditions workers…
