NEWS RELEASE: Glenn Ligon: I Am Somebody, Exhibition of Famed Artist’s Work O pens for the First Time in Peoria on September 5, Press Conference at 10 a.m.

PEORIA, Ill., August 30, 2024—For the first time in Peoria, the works of contemporary art giant Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) are exhibited in Glenn Ligon: I Am Somebody, an intimate exhibition centering around the work Untitled (I Am Somebody), on loan from the Art Bridges Foundation. Glenn Lignon: I Am Somebody is the only exhibition of its kind to explore the potential for self-awareness and formative inspiration through the examination of language.

The exhibition opens at the Peoria Riverfront Museum on September 5, 2024. A press conference will be held at 10 a.m. in the exhibition.

"Peoria Riverfront Museum is excited to exhibit the work of Glenn Ligon, the first Black artist to use pure text-based content as a visual language which redefined the possibilities of painting and positioned the African American point of view squarely into the art world. For over 30 years, his groundbreaking use of reconstituted texts from poets, philosophers, novelists, and even Peoria’s own Richard Pryor, liberated a simple yet metaphorical use of black alphabetical characters on a white surface to brilliantly expose contradictions of identity. Simply said, to have this sampling of Glenn’s early work in Peoria is historic and unprecedented," said Bill Conger, chief curator of the Peoria Riverfront Museum.

Untitled (I Am Somebody) is from Ligon’s famous Door Paintings of the early 1990s, arguably the most impacting series of his career. Lignon’s early oil on canvas works solidified the artist as a unique force in contemporary art.

"Historically, these works comprise imperfect clumps, smears, and globs of oily text fragments chosen from literary masters like James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, and Zora Neale Hurston. Glenn Ligon’s physical application of oil stick results in a forced filling of the negative openings of the plastic stencils, a kind of reverse-positive of self-actualization," said Conger.

"Glenn Ligon fortified the canon of American art with the African American struggle for identity and point of view," said Conger.

Ligon’s work takes its title from a poem first penned in the 1950s by Atlanta pastor Dr. William Holmes Borders. The artwork repeats the phrase "I Am Somebody" while progressively increasing the abstraction and dissolution of the painting’s text. Reverend Jesse Jackson reimagined the poem in his inspirational recitations in the early 1970s. His free verse rendition with children on PBS’s Sesame Street in 1972 continues to be a monolithic display of self-affirmation.

The Glenn Ligon: I Am Somebody exhibition features prominent works from the promised gift of John Heintzman and Jeff Heintzman, and works on loan from Whitney Museum, and on loan from Art Bridges.

Sponsored by Art Bridges, Visionary Society, Friends of Art, and the Illinois Arts Council.

For more information, visit the Peoria Riverfront Museum website at peoriariverfrontmuseum.org.

About Glen Lignon

Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) is an artist living and working in New York. Throughout his career, Ligon 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.

He is best known for his landmark text-based paintings, made since the late 1980s, which draw on the influential writings and speech of 20th-century cultural figures, including James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Genet, and Richard Pryor. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a mid-career retrospective, America, organized by Scott Rothkopf, that traveled nationally. Important solo exhibitions include Post-Noir, Carre d’Art, Nîmes (2022); Call and Response, Camden Arts Centre, London (2014); and Some Changes, The Power Plant Center for Contemporary Art, Toronto (traveled internationally) (2005). Select curatorial projects include Grief and Grievance, New Museum, New York (2021); Blue Black, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2017); and Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions, Nottingham Contemporary and Tate Liverpool (2015). Ligon’s work has been shown in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2015, 1997), Berlin Biennial (2014), Istanbul Biennial (2019, 2011), and Documenta XI (2002). A forthcoming solo exhibition and curatorial project entitled Glenn Ligon: All Over the Place will open at The Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, England, in September 2024.

Ligon’s work is held in the permanent collections of museums worldwide, including Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His awards and honors include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the Studio Museum’s Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. Most recently, Ligon was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

About Peoria Riverfront Museum

The Peoria Riverfront Museum is the only multidisciplinary institution of its kind in the nation combining art, science, history and achievement. The museum is dedicated to using its collections, exhibitions, film planetarium and programming to tell the stories that build confidence; create a culture of lifelong learning; and unleash the full talent and genius of every individual.

Contact Melody Konrad, Peoria Riverfront Museum assistant director of marketing and communications at MKonrad@peoriariverfrontmuseum.org.