Glenn Ligon

It's an artist's job to always have their antennas up.

I like having a studio to go to. It's like having a job.

I graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in art. I was really headed toward an architecture degree, but when I did the requirements for the major, I realized I was more interested in how people live in buildings than in making buildings. I was more interested in the interactions that happened inside the structures.

In writing, something is always left out: it can't be articulated in the space of an essay.

I don't know if I would describe myself as a political artist.

The public schools in our neighborhood were so bad that the teachers in the school said you shouldn't send your kids here. My mother called around and found a school that was willing to give both me and my brother scholarship money. It's a classic story about black parents wanting more for their kids than they had for themselves.

Language controls how you are perceived by others, and in that sense, it is a prison.

Is there such a thing as black art? Or are there just artists who are black?

Race is not something inherent to one's being: One does feel more or less colored, depending on the situation.

A Small Band' was commissioned for the facade of the Central Pavilion at the Fifty-Sixth Venice Biennale in 2013.

Obama is the first African-American president, and for some people, that means a great deal, and for some people, it means very little.

I love Monk's song, 'Just a Gigolo.' It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I'm mesmerized because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made an amazing thing out of it.