📍 Rubell Museum, D.C.
📅 September 27, 2024 – Fall 2025
What happens when artists remix the symbols, people, and power structures that define a nation?
American Vignettes: Symbols, Society, and Satire cracks open the complex story of American identity through nearly 100 works, paintings, photography, sculpture, installations, and mixed media by 40+ artists from the Rubell Collection.
Symbols (Main Gallery + Lower Level)
Flags, statues, and the flickering symbols of memory.
Here, artists like Natalie Ball, Glenn Ligon, Vaughn Spann, Urs Fischer, and William E. Jones explore how icons can be reclaimed — or dismantled — to tell new stories.
Society (Central Floor)
The ties that bind us — or break us.
Figurative works by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Kerry James Marshall, Tschabalala Self, Reginald O’Neal, and Henry Taylor capture everyday life, intimacy, and the messy beauty of community.
Satire (Top Floor)
Sharp. Ruthless. Necessary.
In the spirit of Robert Colescott’s mantra, “It’s the satire that kills the serpent,” artists like Kara Walker, Richard Prince, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Mario Ayala use humor, irony, and exaggeration to gut power structures and provoke change.
Why It Matters:
In a time when American identity feels fractured and hotly debated, American Vignettes reminds us that art doesn’t just mirror society, it twists it, questions it, and rebuilds it from the ground up.
These works dare to ask: Whose stories are we telling?
And whose symbols survive?
