“Mel Ziegler: Flag Exchange” is an installation going on view Friday, March 13, 2020 in the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. Consisting of fifty American flags, one from each state, suspended row after row from the ceiling, this exhibition invites consideration of the American flag as a symbol of national identity and ideals and it will be on view through June 28, 2020.
Mel Ziegler (b. 1956), the Paul E. Shwab Chair of Fine Arts Professor at Vanderbilt University, is a social and community engagement artist whose work seeks to foster discourse and the sharing of ideas relating to history, politics and society. He divides his time between Nashville and rural Nebraska, where he is the founder and executive director of the Sandhills Institute, a grassroots organization dedicated to civically engaged art, in part by connecting local ranchers and farmers with artists around the world.
During his travels across the United States, Ziegler frequently saw the American flag on display in front of schools, homes, small businesses, construction sites, or simply alongside the road.
Many were in poor condition and often ragged, faded or torn. “Mel was intrigued that these expressions of national pride were kept on view by people who either couldn’t afford to replace them or in many cases hadn’t noticed or cared whether theirs had gotten shabby,” says Frist Art Museum Chief Curator Mark Scala. “And he wondered if their owners might be willing to trade theirs for a fresh new flag.” From 2011 to 2016, in what Ziegler calls “inquisitive travels,” he visited all fifty states, with a supply of American flags, and offered to replace old flags with new ones, renewing people’s outdoor displays while acquiring the materials for the exhibition.
The symbolism of frayed and worn flags in ‘Flag Exchange’ raises questions about the capacity of the American experiment to be sustained through national triumphs and shortcomings, including our own time of extreme political divisiveness.
Ziegler writes that when he started acquiring the flags, “I could have never known what the political climate in the United States might be like today. It seems rather significant and pertinent that this project should help develop open, unpartisan dialogue at a moment when it seems to be needed most.”
Throughout the process of gathering and showing the flags, Ziegler was careful to follow the dictates of the U.S. Flag Code regarding their proper handling and display. In thus demonstrating that respect for the flag should rise above partisanship, he hopes to inspire viewers to find common ground in the vision of indivisibility for which the flag stands.
For more information, see: www.fristartmuseum.org or contact Buddy Kite: 615.744.3351, bkite@FristArtMuseum.org, or Ellen Jones Pryor: 615.243.1311, epryor@FristArtMuseum.org.
Editor’s note: Recently opened new exhibitions are: J.M.W. Turner: Quest for the Sublime and Terry Adkins: Our Sons and Daughters Ever on the Altar.
Aboutio
Mel Ziegler earned his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Ziegler has had solo exhibitions at such venues as Artpace, San Antonio; the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal; Secession, Vienna; and the Tang Museum at Skidmore College. He has been a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard School of Design and a Visual Arts Fellow with Creative Capital and has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Ziegler’s work is held in many collections, including those of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; the Des Moines Art Center; the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the San Diego Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.