Since the 1990s, Glenn Ligon has been exploring American history, literature and society by focusing on words, their meaning and illegibility. Relying on various literary sources such as texts by James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman or Jean Genet to name only a few, his approach gives palpable density and weight to the word.

His awards and honors include an American Academy of Arts and Letters Membership, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the Studio Museum’s Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize.

Major institutional exhibitions by Glenn Ligon include the Carré d'Art, Nîmes (2022); Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles (2019); Camden Arts Centre, London (2014); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2011); Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles (2011); The Power Plant, Toronto (2005); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2005); Mudam Luxembourg (2005); Dia Art Foundation, New York (2003); The Studio Museum Harlem, New York (2001), Kunstverein, Munich (2001); The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2000); Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (1998); and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (1996).

He has also participated in major group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (1997 and 2015), the Berlin Biennal (2014), the Istanbul Biennal (2011 and 2019), the Documenta 11 (2002), the Gwangju Biennale (2000) and the Whitney Biennial (1991 and 1993).

He has been involved in curatorial projects such as Blue Black, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis in June 2017 and Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions at Nottingham Contemporary and Tate Liverpool in 2015. 

His work is also part of many collections, among which: Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; ICA, Boston; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The Broad Art Foundation, Detroit; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Glenstone Museum, Potomac; The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.