The image features a series of horizontal lines and a rectangle filled with star shapes at the top left corner. The flag consists of green and black stripes with a red rectangle in the upper left containing a pattern of blue stars. Below, a more subdued version mirrors the form with tones of gray and white. The composition is set against a textured gray background.

Jasper Johns, Bill Goldston, Universal Limited Art Editions, Flags II [trial proof], 1967-1970, color lithograph on wove paper [trial proof], Patrons' Permanent Fund and Special Friends of the National Gallery of Art, 2006.136.31, © 2025 Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Published by Universal Limited Art Editions

Current Exhibition

American Icon

The US Flag in Art

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    East Building

    Exhibition Lobby East Bldg, Concourse Gallery Lobby

  • Ticketing Information

    Admission is always free and passes are not required

Old Glory, reimagined: artists transform our flag over the centuries. 

Across generations, the Stars and Stripes has inspired pride, protest, and profound artistic expression. From battlefields to modern cultural movements, our flag's journey through art reveals a nation constantly redefining itself.

This installation features some 30 artworks from the late 1800s to present day, tracing how the meaning of the US flag has evolved over time. It explores what the flag represents and how people connect with it. You’ll find paintings, prints, and photographs by renowned artists like Gordon Parks, Childe Hassam, Dorothea Lange, Jasper Johns, and Faith Ringgold. 

Selected works

The image features a series of horizontal lines and a rectangle filled with star shapes at the top left corner. The flag consists of green and black stripes with a red rectangle in the upper left containing a pattern of blue stars. Below, a more subdued version mirrors the form with tones of gray and white. The composition is set against a textured gray background.

Jasper Johns, Flags II [trial proof], 1967-1970, color lithograph on wove paper [trial proof], Patrons' Permanent Fund and Special Friends of the National Gallery of Art, 2006.136.31. © 2025 Jasper Johns and ULAE / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, Published by Universal Limited Art Editions

This image features bold geometric shapes in red and blue hues, including rectangles and a heart shape in the center. The pattern resembles a flag, with one blue rectangle bearing the words "flag of my home" in red script.

Corita Kent, Flag of My Home, 1976, screenprint in blue and red on wove paper, Gift of Bob Stana and Tom Judy, 2019.109.46. © 2025 Corita Art Center, Corita.org, Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

We look beyond a cluster of flags hanging from the side of one tall building onto a wide street at a row of buildings across from us in this vertical painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes, so some details are difficult to make out. We seem to lean out a window to look along the street, so the building to our right only skims the edge of the composition and continues off the top. The three flags closest to us fly from nearly horizontal flagstaffs along the bottom edge of the painting. All the flags are in shades of scarlet red, white, and royal blue. The flag closest to us is red with the red, white, and blue Union Jack in the upper corner. Beyond it is an American flag with 49 stars, and then the French flag with the vertical bands of blue, white, and red. Those three flags are repeated about a dozen times along the building that stretches away from us, along the right edge of the painting. More of those flags are hung from the cream-white and tan buildings across the street, to our left. Some of those buildings reach off the top edge of the canvas and others come close. The shadows along moldings and the windows are painted with pale and lapis blue. Through narrow gaps left between the fluttering flags, vertical strokes of navy blue and violet purple suggest crowds of people in the street below. The sky between the buildings is ice blue. The artist signed and dated the painting in the center left, “Childe Hassam May 17 1917.”
Childe Hassam, Allies Day, May 1917, 1917, oil on canvas, Gift of Ethelyn McKinney in memory of her brother, Glenn Ford McKinney, 1943.9.1
This is a photograph of the moon's surface featuring a U.S. flag and a person in a white spacesuit. The dark sky beyond contrasts with the brightly lit surface of the gray moon, which is covered in fine, grey dust featuring numerous footprints. In the center of the photograph, the flag stands on a thin rod and extends outward to the left. The person in the spacesuit is on the right, facing the flag. On the left side of the image, parts of a metal object are visible, which look like a metallic framework.
Neil Armstrong, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Buzz Aldrin Poses with Flag, July 20, 1969, chromogenic print, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon, 2018.177.26
Two people look out of side-by-side windows in a brick building in this horizontal black and white photograph. The woman on our left has a double chin and a broad chest. She wears a polka-dotted dress and dark shawl or vest, and she leans forward with one hand on the sill. Her face is partially shadowed by a white window blind. An American flag hanging near this window billows across the right two-thirds of the picture, entirely hiding the second person’s head. That person wears a coat buttoned up to a rounded collar. They hold one hand near their chin and the other by their waist. The flag has eight columns of stars. The work is signed and dated in the white margin below: “1955 HOBOKEN” to the left and “Robert Frank” to the right.

Robert Frank, Parade—Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955, printed 1977, gelatin silver print, Robert Frank Collection, Robert B. Menschel Fund, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.82.5.

Organization
Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Curated by Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic Art at the National Gallery of Art

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The image is a repeating pattern of portraits of a historical figure framed within oval borders. Each portrait displays only the upper body, showing the head and shoulders of the individual in a forward-facing position with slightly turned shoulders. The person has a solemn expression, a prominent nose, narrow eyes, wears a white historical powdered wig and a dark coat with a high collar and a white ruffled shirt. The background has vine-like designs. There is a logo on the right that says America's 250th.

Exhibition:  Dear America

Close to us, a young man and three boys sit or recline in a small sailboat that tips to our left on a choppy dark green sea in this horizontal painting. The billowing sail extends off the top left corner of the canvas and is echoed in the background to our right by the tall sails of another ship in the distance. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and puffy gray and white clouds sweep across the turquoise sky. There is a logo that reads America's 250th on the right.

Exhibition:  Celebrating American Art