This Independence Day weekend, we’ll be drowning in a sea of stars and stripes. Fireworks will burst in air. And despite the fact that the free are being thrown into vans by masked operatives while the “brave” have no comment, on Saturday morning a lot of flags will, in fact, still be there — even if the ideals they represent are tattered and frayed.
“It often rhymes,” a new and powerful exhibition at the Current in Stowe, explores our relationship to national symbols, protest, history and democracy. The title riffs on a quote attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.” Those rhymes — echoes of other inflection points or long-standing injustices — stand out and inform the present moment by reminding us what the past felt like.
Dona Ann McAdams‘ black-and-white photographs give us history in granular detail. The photographer, who now lives in Sandgate, is best known for her images of protests and actions from the 1980s and ’90s. “Day of Desperation, Act Up, Grand Central Terminal, January 23, 1991,” the oldest of the five works presented here, pictures slightly blurry, hastily photographed protesters hanging a banner across a Metro-North departures board; the trains’ precise schedules mirror the banner’s message: “One AIDS Death Every 8 Minutes.” Another image — of Black Lives Matter protesters, some of them masked, from July 1, 2020 — reminds us of a more recent moment when public health and personal identity were similarly entwined, both subject to official inaction and indifference.
Protest continues in “Public Address,” an installation of signs by Ellen Rothenberg. In red and black block lettering, the Chicago-based artist quotes excerpts from photo captions in a 1914 British anti-suffrage publication. With phrases such as “Rather Emotional,” “Dishevelled After Fighting” and “Screaming With Impotent Rage,” the placards describe women before, during and after their arrests for confrontations with police.
Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur, in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery — all members of the artist-led organization For Freedoms — bridge a similar historical gap with a more optimistic vision. Four 52.5-by-42-inch color photographs re-create Norman Rockwell’s iconic 1943 “Four Freedoms” paintings, which are based on values Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined in his 1941 State of the Union address: freedom of speech, freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom of worship.
While the photographs stick closely to Rockwell’s compositions and settings, Thanksgiving dinner spread included, the people in them are notably more diverse. Some are recognizable, such as actor and activist Rosario Dawson taking the place of Jim Edgerton, who stood up to speak at Arlington’s town meeting in 1942 and was immortalized in the original “Freedom of Speech.” Yet the photos are most effective when, as in Rockwell’s, the models are ordinary people. The brown and Black family tucking in their children may represent freedom from fear, but their toddler’s face says otherwise.
The American flag features prominently in a few works in the show. Robert Buck, who works in New York City, created “through the night that…” in 2011, shortly after moving part time to far West Texas. His flag is recognizable but dyed inky black, held by a pole leaning askew and propped up by a coil of barbed wire. The sculpture is designed to be taken apart and put back together “as needed,” Buck writes in his statement. Since the sculpture’s first incarnation, the absence of proof that our flag “was still there, undimmed and upright,” he writes, “woefully corroborates the precarity and tension” of his assemblage, which has only become more relevant over time.
The flag is recognizable but dyed inky black, held by a pole leaning askew and propped up by a coil of barbed wire.
Charlotte artist Janie Cohen‘s “We Hold These Truths,” a response to the first Trump administration, layers and twists a weathered, stained flag into a new form, hanging from a majorette’s baton and patched with an embroidered upraised fist. It’s a personal, intimate take on how one’s relationship to a symbol changes over time — in this case, from disconnected to deeply emotional.
Thomas, who lives in Brooklyn and collaborated on the “Four Freedoms” photographs, also presents two solo works in the show. One of them, “Flag III,” nods to Jasper Johns’ many paintings of the symbol, which he started making in the 1950s. Where Johns’ works build texture and interest through encaustic brushstrokes, the surface of Thomas’ flag is made of retroreflective vinyl. In darkness, viewers taking flash photos see a collage of activist imagery embedded beneath the stars and bars.
Nicholas Galanin, an Indigenous Lingít and Unangax artist from Sitka, Alaska, presents the immersive, affecting installation “Neon American Anthem (red),” the centerpiece of the show. Even before viewers enter the Current’s west gallery, 16-foot-wide glowing neon-red text on a matte black wall confronts them with the artist’s words: “I’VE COMPOSED A NEW AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM / TAKE A KNEE / AND SCREAM / UNTIL / YOU CAN’T BREATHE.”
A grid of carpet squares on the floor invites visitors to do just that. The surface feels wiry and uncomfortable against the knees, like red Astroturf, as the buzzing neon creates a strange atmosphere that’s both meditative and urgent. With just a few lines, Galanin references George Floyd’s words as he was murdered by Minneapolis police, as well as the controversy around former National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s practice of taking a knee during the national anthem to protest similar injustices. The work compresses action, reaction and symbol into a single moment of experience; its monumental scale makes it impossible to ignore.
Gallery manager Kelly Holt said that during the exhibition’s first weekend, only one person actually screamed in the installation. With the way things are going, they won’t be the last.
The original print version of this article was headlined “O Say, Can You See? | Protest, history and democracy reverberate in a powerful show at the Current”
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This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2025.
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