{"secondaryobjectnumber":null,"periodterms":[],"creditline":"Museum purchase, Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund\r\n","caption":"Glenn Ligon (born 1960, Bronx, NY; active New York), Untitled: Four Etchings, 1992. Soft-ground etching, aquatint, spit bite, and sugar-lift; 50.9 × 40.3 cm (plate, each), 63.5 × 44.5 cm (sheet, each), 73.7 × 54.3 × 4.8 cm (frame, each). Museum purchase, Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund\r\n (2011-27 a-d)","cultureterms":[{"id":2038492,"culture":"American"}],"type":"artobject","dimensionsproposed":"","terms":[{"id":2054256,"term":"prints","aatid":300041273,"termtype":"Classification"},{"id":2051492,"term":"letter pictures","aatid":300033914,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2122110,"term":"quotations (texts)","aatid":300026941,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2038492,"term":"American","aatid":300107956,"termtype":"Culture"},{"id":2095626,"term":"quotations (visual)","aatid":300055816,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2054573,"term":"aquatints","aatid":300041366,"termtype":"Classification"},{"id":2095890,"term":"political art","aatid":300256621,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2096405,"term":"race (concept)","aatid":300256475,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2096845,"term":"identity","aatid":300257052,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2185092,"term":"Artists of Africa's Diasporas","aatid":null,"termtype":"Collection Theme"},{"id":2156299,"term":"mounting","aatid":300081370,"termtype":"Techniques"},{"id":2167714,"term":"printing ink","aatid":300187371,"termtype":"Materials"},{"id":2154976,"term":"etching (printing process)","aatid":300053241,"termtype":"Techniques"},{"id":2171241,"term":"soft ground","aatid":300183909,"termtype":"Materials"},{"id":2154994,"term":"sugar-lift","aatid":300190346,"termtype":"Materials"},{"id":2155192,"term":"spit biting","aatid":300179725,"termtype":"Materials"}],"geography":[{"displaygeography":"Place made: North America, United States","code":"Place made","continent":"North America","subcontinent":null,"country":"United States","region":null,"state":null,"city":null,"county":null,"subregion":null,"locale":null,"locus":null,"river":null,"excavation":null,"geoname":"http://www.geonames.org/6252001/united-states.html","location":{"lat":"","lon":""}}],"dimensionelements":[{"element":"sheet","type":"Height","units":"centimeters","dimension":"63.49"},{"element":"sheet","type":"Width","units":"centimeters","dimension":"44.50"},{"element":"plate","type":"Height","units":"centimeters","dimension":"50.90"},{"element":"plate","type":"Width","units":"centimeters","dimension":"40.30"},{"element":"frame","type":"Height","units":"centimeters","dimension":"73.65"},{"element":"frame","type":"Width","units":"centimeters","dimension":"54.29"},{"element":"frame","type":"Depth","units":"centimeters","dimension":"4.76"}],"markings":null,"accessionyear":"2011-01-01","newaccession":0,"makers":[{"id":1456,"displayname":"Glenn Ligon","displaydate":"born 1960, Bronx, NY; active New York","datebegin":1960,"dateend":2100,"prefix":null,"suffix":null,"role":"Artist","displaymaker":"Glenn Ligon, born 1960, Bronx, NY; active New York","displayorder":1}],"datecomputed":1992,"signed":"Signed and dated, lower right: Glenn Ligon '92","restrictions":"Restricted","classification":"Prints","packages":[{"packageid":206417,"name":"image_descriptions_top250"},{"packageid":11595,"name":"Web_MM_2014-2"},{"packageid":181775,"name":"CRS_2020_FRS132_04_01"},{"packageid":220938,"name":"web_2000-2022printacquisitions"},{"packageid":224500,"name":"2023_FRS183_02_20"},{"packageid":197269,"name":"web_highlights -revised 2021"},{"packageid":203601,"name":"web_DarknessandLight"}],"catalograisonne":null,"classifications":[{"id":2054573,"classification":"aquatints"},{"id":2054256,"classification":"prints"}],"exhibitions":[{"exhibitionid":3365,"citation":"Making History Visible: Of American Myths and National Heroes (Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - Sunday, January 14, 2018)","isvirtual":true,"begindate":"2017-09-26","enddate":"2018-01-14","uri":"https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions/3365"}],"cultures":[],"primaryimage":["https://media.artmuseum.princeton.edu/iiif/3/collection/2011-27A"],"displaytitle":"Untitled: Four Etchings","displayculture":null,"displaymaker":"Glenn Ligon, born 1960, Bronx, NY; active New York","captionhtml":"Glenn Ligon (born 1960, Bronx, NY; active New York), <i>Untitled: Four Etchings</i>, 1992. Soft-ground etching, aquatint, spit bite, and sugar-lift; 50.9 × 40.3 cm (plate, each), 63.5 × 44.5 cm (sheet, each), 73.7 × 54.3 × 4.8 cm (frame, each). Museum purchase, Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund\r\n (2011-27 a-d)","displaydate":"1992","medium":"Soft-ground etching, aquatint, spit bite, and sugar-lift","media":[{"id":63099,"uri":"https://media.artmuseum.princeton.edu/iiif/3/collection/2011-27A","isprimary":1,"rank":1,"mediatypeid":1,"mediaviewtype":"(not assigned)","restrictions":"Restricted","caption":"Bruce White Photography"},{"id":63100,"uri":"https://media.artmuseum.princeton.edu/iiif/3/collection/2011-27B","isprimary":0,"rank":2,"mediatypeid":1,"mediaviewtype":"(not assigned)","restrictions":"Restricted","caption":"Bruce White Photography"},{"id":63101,"uri":"https://media.artmuseum.princeton.edu/iiif/3/collection/2011-27C","isprimary":0,"rank":3,"mediatypeid":1,"mediaviewtype":"(not assigned)","restrictions":"Restricted","caption":"Bruce White Photography"},{"id":63102,"uri":"https://media.artmuseum.princeton.edu/iiif/3/collection/2011-27D","isprimary":0,"rank":4,"mediatypeid":1,"mediaviewtype":"(not assigned)","restrictions":"Restricted","caption":"Bruce White Photography"}],"displayperiod":null,"extended_content":true,"campuscollections":"false","bibliography":[{"boilertext":"\"Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2011,\"&nbsp;<em>Record of the Princeton University Art Museum</em> 71/72 (2012-13): p. 75-132.","citation":"\"Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2011,\"&nbsp;<em>Record of the Princeton University Art Museum</em> 71/72 (2012-13): p. 75-132., p. 103","date":2012,"id":2987,"uri":"https://www.jstor.org/stable/24416387"},{"boilertext":"<i>Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections </i>(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013)","citation":"<i>Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections </i>(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 360","date":2013,"id":1994,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/865020505"}],"nowebuse":"False","periods":[],"department":"Prints and Drawings","attribute_groups":[{"id":2199324,"term":"Art Since 1945","termtype":"Collecting Area"},{"id":2199325,"term":"North American Art","termtype":"Collecting Area"},{"id":2199327,"term":"Prints and Drawings","termtype":"Collecting Area"}],"daterange":"A.D. 1945-present","dateend":1992,"depicted":[],"titles":[{"title":"Untitled: Four Etchings","titletype":"Primary Title","displayorder":1}],"hasimage":"true","creditlinerepro":"© Glenn Ligon / Courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Thomas Dane, London, and Chantal Crousel, Paris","objectnumber":"2011-27 a-d","inscribed":"Inscribed and numbered, lower left: A.P. 10//10","texts":[{"texttype":"Online","textpurpose":"Special Exhibition","textentryhtml":"In <EM>Untitled: Four Etchings</EM>, Ligon draws on the iconic texts of two luminary African American authors. The black on white prints repeat two sentences from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928); the black on black prints repeat a single passage from the prologue to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952). Several types of visual tension— between legibility and illegibility, presence and absence, visibility and erasure, and white and black—are at play in these prints. The viewer’s struggle to read the texts, built up in layers, mirrors the struggle of the African American<BR>artist to claim his agency, voice, and worth in the face of institutional bias. In translating these excerpts of prose into visual images, Ligon cast himself in a lineage of African American contributors to American cultural heritage, working in a mode that insists upon their merit being measured by their work rather than by representations of their bodies.","remarks":"Making History Visible"},{"texttype":"Online","textpurpose":"Handbook Entry","textentryhtml":"\r\nOne of the most important contemporary artists working today, Glenn Ligon first came to promi&shy;nence in the late 1980s. Race, homosexuality, prejudice, and stereotypes constitute his primary subject matter, while quotation is one of his primary strategies. <I>Untitled: Four Etchings</I> is related formally, thematically, and historically to the work for which he is best known: oil-stick and coal dust \"paintings\" from the early to mid-1990s. Comprised of two black-on-black and two black-on-white prints, the work triggers a play between legibility and illegibility, presence and absence, visibility and erasure, and white and black that operates simultaneously on many different levels. Excerpts from the writing of two African American authors anchor the work. On the black-on-white prints, Ligon repeats two sentences from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay \"How It Feels to Be Colored Me\" (1928); on the black-on-black prints, he quotes a single passage from the prologue to Ralph Ellison’s <I>Invisible Man</I> (1952). The struggle to read these texts mirrors the struggle of the \"I\" to assert itself; more specifically, it evokes the struggle of the African American \"I\" to claim its agency, voice, and worth. This struggle is not the characters’ or the authors’ alone: as a gay African American man, Ligon bears the burden of non- or mis-recognition as well. </P></SPAN>","remarks":null}],"datebegin":1992,"sortnumber":"2011   27 a    d","published_date":"2026-03-31 02:45:56.114807","objectid":60755,"dimensions":"plate (each): 50.9 × 40.3 cm (20 1/16 × 15 7/8 in.)\r\nsheet (each): 63.5 × 44.5 cm (25 × 17 1/2 in.)\r\nframe (each): 73.7 × 54.3 × 4.8 cm (29 × 21 3/8 × 1 7/8 in.)","on_view":false}