Glenn Ligon

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"In 2000, I had a year long residency at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In addition to creating a solo show of paintings based in children's coloring books, I collaborated with the Givens Collection of African American Literature at the University of Minnesota. I did not have a specific project in mind when approaching their vast holdings, but after a couple of hours of wandering through their stacks and randomly pulling books off the shelves it became clear one could trace a history of black people in the United States simply by examining how we were represented on book covers."--Foreword