#illumnation

As we look back over a year of seismic political upheaval and tenuous national division, we are thankful for artists. For their powers of imagination and articulation, for illuminating the invisible, and for their empathy, their rage, and their daring. Robert Longo’s American flag is divided into two panels, made and titled for election day 2016. Given the outcome, the right panel is slightly bigger, but in allegiance to his own progressive views, the left has more stars. Appearing in our 5th floor American art galleries—adjacent to his work on view in Proof—among early colonial portraits and furniture, it draws a continuous line of debate and disagreement about American identity, from a young nation to our current one.