Glenn Ligon joined Hauser & Wirth.
Glenn Ligon at LACMA in 2011. Photo by Stefanie Keenan/WireImage.
Hauser & Wirth, the global mega-gallery with spaces in New York, Los Angeles, London, Hong Kong, and Zurich—as well as outposts in the Swiss ski towns of Gstaad and St. Moritz, and a gallery on a farm in the English countryside of Somerset—has a stacked roster, repping more than 80 artists or artist estates. We can now add one more to the lineup: Glenn Ligon, the New York-based artist who has previously shown with Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Luhring Augustine in New York, and Thomas Dane in London.
The news was first made public by insider industry newsletter the Baer Faxt and the gallery has not officially commented on the news. ARTnews noted that Regen Projects will still be sharing representation in Los Angeles, but there is no word on where or when the artist’s first Hauser & Wirth show will take place.
Glenn Ligon, Hands, 1996. Photo by Brian Forrest. © Glenn Ligon. Courtesy of the artist, Hauser and Wirth, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, and Chantal Crousel, Paris.
In many ways, the move makes sense, especially given Ligon’s relationship with a number of artists who regularly show with the gallery. Perhaps most prominently, Hauser & Wirth represents the estate of Philip Guston, the late American painter to whom Ligon has professed a close kinship. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth, he was able to include a gloomy Guston painting, Dark Room (1978), in a 2017 show he curated at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis and told the New York Times in an interview that “I wanted to be Guston when I was a young artist.”
Ligon has been included in the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and Documenta, the quinquennial art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.
Glenn Ligon, Warm Broad Glow, 2005. Photo by Rick Gardner. © Glenn Ligon. Courtesy of the artist, Hauser and Wirth, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, and Chantal Crousel, Paris.
