There is a startlingly candid moment that occurs between Thelma Golden, the Director of The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the artist Glenn Ligon during a conversation featured in the catalogue accompanying “Glenn Ligon: America,” a mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Golden speaks of Ligon’s efforts in encouraging a new generation of artists, mentioning the behind-the-scenes role he played in organizing “Freestyle,” an exhibition of emerging talent mounted by the Studio Museum in 2001. A generous gesture on Ligon’s part, you might think, but you’d be wrong. Explaining how younger black artists aren’t all that interested in identity politics or “reparations to artists of color”—how, in fact, they consider themselves mainstream—Ligon goes on to say that this “indifference to those issues opens space for me.” Laughingly referring to his own self-interest, Ligon cops to wanting to keep the competition small, navigable, and under control.
What’s noteworthy about this exchange isn’t that an artist is looking out for number one or choreographing the most expedient way of insuring career longevity—artists have been engaged in such maneuvers since day one. Instead, it’s the casual, even light-hearted tone of Ligon’s admission. Like any number of art-scene operators, Ligon is savvy to the prerequisites of the market place. He’s less interested in the hard-won victories of pursuing an individual vision than in establishing and sustaining the Ligon brand. As such, he’s adept at pushing certain buttons even as the work, shrink-wrapped as it is in certainty, goes