Glenn Ligon was born in 1960 in the Bronx in New York. With scholarship assistance, he
was able to receive his early education at a private school in Manhattan. Ligon began his
undergraduate studios at the Rhode Island School of Design before transfering toWesleyan University where he earned a B.A. in 1982. In 1985 he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. Ligon has often empolyeed text from literary sources such as James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Mar y Shelley, Jean Genet, and Zora Neale Hurston to communicate an ongoing exploration of personhood. Frequently using text in his work Ligon is perhaps best known for his elegant and beautifully composed text-based canvases and prints, which he began producing in the early 1990s. Ligon is one of the leading conceptual artists in the U.S.A. and his work is widely exhibited in major museums and galleries nationally and internationally. His subjective explorations of cultural and social issues surrounding black identity and race, sex, sexuality and gender take form through borrowed voices expressed in a range of media from text-based paintings, print making, photo text images, and video works.Ligon has received numerous accolades, including the United States Artists Fellowship (2010); Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize from the Studio Museum in Harlem (2009); Skowhegan Medal for Painting (2006); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2003); Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (1998); and Visual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1989, 1991). Many institutions such as, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporar y Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Tate Modern; Walker Art Center ; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, have his work in their collections. Glenn Ligon works and resides in New York City.