American Icon: The US Flag in Art

In Robert Frank's 1955 photograph of Hoboken's centennial parade, the flag gets in the way. Two women watch from their windows and a billowing Stars and Stripes half hides them. That is the kind of picture this show collects: some 30 works, late 1800s to now, in which the flag is the subject, the prop or the raw material.

It runs from Childe Hassam's Allies Day, May 1917, with British, French and American flags hanging throughout to mark America's entry into World War I, to Holly Bass dancing to Black music in her 2021 video American Woman. You walk from Jasper Johns's grey Flag, the red, white and blue drained out of it, to Faith Ringgold's The Flag is Bleeding (1967), which she painted partly in answer to him.

Everything comes from the Gallery's own collection, so expect a compact show rather than a parade of loans. It's in the East Building's Concourse galleries, free with no passes needed, until 6 December.