Glenn Ligon

Documenting Jennie C. Jones’s multisensory site-specific artwork, this volume highlights her inspirations—from Minimalism and Modernism to avant-garde music Multimedia artist Jennie C. Jones draws on the aesthetics of minimalism and the improvisational qualities of avant-garde music to consider the sonic potential of abstraction. This volume, the latest in The Met’s Roof Garden Commission series, documents Jones’s dynamic installation. It features a trio of sculptural forms based on stringed instruments—a zither, a one-string, and an Aeolian harp—joined by a floor-based work that serves as the “conductor” of this ensemble. Full of sonic possibility, the sculptures sit quietly until they are played by the movement of the wind. An essay situates Ensemble within the artist’s larger practice and an interview with Jones conducted by Glenn Ligon charts the development of the commission, connects her site-responsive work to the collection and architecture of The Met, and explores the artist’s unique engagement with sound and visual abstraction. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (April 15–October 19, 2025)

A new, fully transcribed edition of the celebrated collection of Jack Whitten’s wide-ranging, perceptive writings When it was originally published in 2018, Notes from the Woodshed marked the first time that a book had been devoted to the writings of pioneering American artist Jack Whitten. Edited by art historian Katy Siegel, this new edition of the celebrated publication now presents a fully transcribed collection of Whitten’s insightful, searching writings, alongside a new afterword in the form of a conversation between curators Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Zoé Whitley and artist Glenn Ligon. Widely renowned for his experimental approach to painting, Whitten often turned to writing as away to investigate, understand, and grapple with his practice and his milieu. Taking its title from the heading that Whitten scrawled across many of his texts—a term borrowed from the world of jazz that means “to practice in private”—Notes from the Woodshed is a fascinating, intimate insight into an artist at work.

A collection of by turns polemical and personal writings and interviews from conceptual artist and commentator Glenn Ligon in an accessible paperback volume. This long-awaited and essential publication collects three decades of writings and interviews by Glenn Ligon, whose work has been delivering an incisive examination of race, history, sexuality, and culture in America since his emergence as an artist in the late 1980s. No stranger to text, Ligon has routinely used writings from James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Richard Pryor, and others to construct work that centers Blackness within the historically white backdrop of the artworld and culture writ large. He began writing in the early 2000s, engaging deeply with the work of peers such as Julie Mehretu, Chris Ofili, and Lorna Simpson, as well as artists that came before him, among them Philip Guston, David Hammons, and Andy Warhol. Throughout the publication’s sixteen essays, Ligon combines razor-sharp insight with anecdotal and biographical details, providing the fullest picture yet of the artist and his ongoing evaluation of the art and politics of our time. Complementing these texts are illuminating interviews with Helga Davis, Thelma Golden, Byron Kim, Hamza Walker, and others, as well as a foreword by Thomas (T.) Jean Lax and an afterword by the artist.

In this artist book, celebrated American Conceptual artist Glenn Ligon traces the representation of Black people on book covers in the United States, highlighting the deliberate use of typography, photography and graphics. Best known for appropriating imagery and text from popular culture, Ligon has selected over 50 book covers – by both lesser-known and seminal authors, such as James Baldwin, Norman Mailer and Toni Morrison – to explore a rich and complex set of histories and representations. To introduce the book, an essay by Ligon identifies one of the foundation stones of his life and work: the act of reading. Spanning the twentieth century and grouped thematically, the covers reveal correspondences between the past and the present, as well as links between the social and visual constructs of race, beauty and the body. Published to coincide with the exhibition Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions, both co-curated and featuring works by the artist, held at Nottingham Contemporary (4 April–14 June 2015) and Tate Liverpool (30 June–18 October 2015).

Philosopher, Afro-futurist, and jazz legend Sun Ra (1914-93) constructed much of his complicated public persona during his sojourn in Chicago in the mid-1950s. Working with a still-shadowy underground fraternal organization, Ra amassed a library of books on the occult, Egyptology, race studies, Theosophy, and religion - all in service of drawing elliptical connections between these disparate bodies of knowledge. This work became the foundation of the personal mythology Ra employed in the 1960s when he began fronting his Myth-Science Arkestra and started drawing attention from more mainstream jazz fans. "Pathways to Unknown Worlds" presents a kaleidoscopic range of materials from those years, including original record cover designs and production materials, paper ephemera, and photographs. These materials - most previously unseen - dramatically flesh out the story of Sun Ra's mystical journey of discovery and his lofty goals for the dissemination of his new knowledge; they are certain to fascinate and delight Ra's legion of fans.