Glenn Ligon

Throughout his career, Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across bodies of work that build critically on the legacies of modern painting and conceptual art. On view in the Pavilions’ Passage is Warm Broad Glow II, 2011, which reads “Negro Sunshine,” a phrase taken from Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives (1909): “Rose laughed when she was happy but she had not the wide, abandoned laughter that makes the warm broad glow of negro sunshine.” Warm Broad Glow II marks the first installation of work by Glenn Ligon at Glenstone, although the artist’s Untitled (America), 2018, has been on loan to the REACH at The Kennedy Center since 2019.