With her work, Lorna Simpson explores the narrative limits of image and text. An avid generator and collector of images, Simpson’s nuanced investigation of Black American culture eschews narrow readings of race, gender, sexuality, and American history. In her monumental work Specific Notation, 2019, in Glenstone’s collection, the commanding gaze of a Black woman is situated in the upper register among dense clouds of nocturnal blue. The image of the figure, repurposed from Simpson’s collection of Jet and Ebony magazine cutouts, has been blown up to a larger scale and screen-printed on a gessoed fiberglass panel. Appearing as though she is behind an arctic storm, only partially visible, the figure’s identity is both concealed from and revealed to the viewer.

–Fanna Gebreyesus, from the Glenstone Field Guide