Join us at our 18th Street gallery for a film series on the legendary novelist and activist James Baldwin, selected by Glenn Ligon.
On the occasion of ‘Glenn Ligon. Late at night, early in the morning, at noon,’ an exhibition of new works on paper by artist Glenn Ligon, we're thrilled to present ‘Take This Hammer’ a film series on the legendary novelist and activist James Baldwin, selected by Glenn Ligon.
The films included in the series span a decade from the early 1960s to the early 1970s and range in content from the iconic James Baldwin debate with conservative writer and political commentator William F. Buckley, to a tour through San Francisco to discover ‘the real situation’ happening in the city, to a poetic film capturing intimate footage of Baldwin living in Istanbul, Turkey.
To kick off the series, on Wednesday 4 February, following the first night of screenings, Glenn Ligon will be joined by author of ‘Baldwin: A Love Story,’ Nicholas Boggs, for a conversation about the lasting influence of James Baldwin.
The series will take place in the amphitheater at our 18th Street location in Chelsea.
All screenings are free and open to the public; however, due to limited space, reservations are required.
Wednesday 4 February, 6.30 pm
TAKE THIS HAMMER (1963), Directed by Richard O. Moore
44 mins
FROM ANOTHER PLACE (1973), Directed by Sedat Pakay
12 min
OUTTAKES FROM ‘JAMES BALDWIN. FROM ANOTHER PLACE’ (1973)
Preserved by Yale Film Archive and edited by Brian Meacham
9 min
IN CONVERSATION: GLENN LIGON & NICHOLAS BOGGS - Live
30 min
About ‘Glenn Ligon. Late at night, early in the morning, at noon’
‘Late at night, early in the morning, at noon’ is a two-part exhibition of new and historic works on paper by Glenn Ligon. This presentation extends the artist’s longstanding engagement with language and abstraction through a series of richly layered compositions that meditate on the color blue and its emotional, historical and cultural inflections. In dialogue with the writings of James Baldwin, Ligon’s latest work here traverses the space between legibility and sensation, where text dissolves into atmosphere and meaning into light.
About Glenn Ligon
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 earned his BA from Wesleyan University (1982) and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1985). In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a mid-career retrospective, ‘Glenn Ligon: AMERICA,’ organized by Scott Rothkopf, that traveled nationally. Important solo exhibitions include ‘Post-Noir,’ Carre d’Art, Nîmes (2022); ‘Glenn Ligon: Call and Response,’ Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2014); and ‘Glenn Ligon – Some Changes,’ The Power Plant Center for Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada and then traveled internationally (2005). Select curatorial projects include ‘Grief and Grievance,’ New Museum, New York NY (2021); ‘Blue Black,’ Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis MO (2017); and ‘Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions,’ Nottingham Contemporary and Tate Liverpool, UK (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).
About Nicholas Boggs
Nicholas Boggs is the New York Times bestselling author of ‘Baldwin: A Love Story,’ the first major biography of the iconic figure in over three decades. He also co-edited a new edition of Baldwin's collaboration with French artist Yoran Cazac, ‘Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood’ (2018). He is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Gilder Lehrman Center and Beinecke Library at Yale, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. Most recently he was the 2024-2025 John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he received his BA from Yale and his PhD from Columbia, both in English, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He now resides in New York City.
