Museum admission is free
galleries open today until 6PM
Hammer Channel

Watch 1,000+ talks, performances, artist profiles, and more.

Go to Hammer Channel
Collections
Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

See 50,000+ objects, including prints, photographs, paintings, and more.

Go to Hammer Collections

The Hammer Museum and Lulu restaurant will be closed to the public on Tuesday, December 24 and Wednesday, December 25.

Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Glenn Ligon, Notes on the Margin of the "Black Book"
Notes on the Margin of the “Black Book,” by Glenn Ligon, 1991–93

Glenn Ligon, Artist
Notes on the Margin of the "Black Book" , 1991–93

Medium
91 offset prints and 78 texts
Dimensions
Offset prints, 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 in. (29.2 x 29.2 cm) each (framed); text pages, 5 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. (13.3 x 18.4 cm) each (framed)
Credit Line
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Gift, The Bohen Foundation, 2001 (2001.180) All Mapplethorpe photographs © Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Installation detail view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; photography by Brian Forrest

In Notes on the Margin of the "Black Book," Glenn Ligon, like some other artists featured in Take It or Leave It, has taken as his subject matter the work of another artist. Seventy-eight distinct comments from a variety of political and cultural voices are presented here alongside ninety-one reproductions of Robert Mapplethorpe's controversial photographs of nude black men. By highlighting the heterogeneity of and discord between the many remarks, Ligon restages a debate that arose during the height of the culture wars of the 1980s and foregrounds the emotional, political, and unconscious aspects rarely acknowledged as driving them.