In 1989, 24-year-old artist Dread Scott’s What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag invited guests to walk across Old Glory to write their answer to that question in a ledger. The provocative piece drew the ire of the sitting president George H.W. Bush.
When Scott and other protestors later burned a flag at the U.S. Capitol, their arrest eventually led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that flag-burning is protected speech under the Constitution.
Scott provides a deliberate callback to that work with Defending the Flag (2026), in which the stars and stripes are hung on a proper pole, but anyone who steps near it is prevented from doing so by a retired military service member brandishing a prop rifle.
The latter work isn’t the chief focus of Dread Scott: The Body Politic, currently running at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but it does provide an important context.
