2000

Prints and Drawings

This screenprint by Glenn Ligon depicts text excerpted from The Fire Next Time, a 1963 publication on race by the African American novelist James Baldwin, superimposed on an image of the Million Man March, the 1995 demonstration by black men held in Washington, D. C. Baldwin’s text reads, “[S]omething in me wondered ‘What will happen to all that beauty.’” Ligon stencils the powerful words in delicate coal dust, barely fixed and legible, partially obscuring the photograph of bodies. Ligon uses this visual ambiguity to comment on the exclusion of subgroups of African Americans—such as women and homosexuals—from the march and the concerns of civil rights leaders in general.

Medium

Screenprint with coal flocking

Dimensions

screen: 12 × 18 in. (30.5 × 45.7 cm)
sheet: 19 3/4 × 27 3/4 in. (50.2 × 70.5 cm)

Credit Line

Gift of Jean and Robert E. Steele, M.P.H. 1971, M.S. 1974, Ph.D. 1975

Accession Number

2005.90.1

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Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Bibliography
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Additional information

Edition

Edition 4 of 30

Inscriptions

Recto, LL corner, below image, in graphite: 4/30

Signed

Recto, below image, LR corner, in graphite: Glenn Ligon 2000

Technical metadata and APIs

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Open in Mirador

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