Yemen Heritage, US Flags At The National Gallery In Washington, Felix Gonzalez-Torres-Podcast The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

(MENAFN- USA Art News) American Flag Imagery in Washington and Felix Gonzalez-Torres in Madrid Mark Two Museum Conversations

Two exhibitions opening in Washington and Madrid are asking viewers to look again at symbols that can seem instantly legible. At the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., American Icon: The US Flag in Art opens on 6 June and runs through 6 December, bringing together works that examine how artists have used the flag as a subject, a material, and a site of debate. Ben Luke spoke with the museum's chief curatorial and conservation officer, E. Carmen Ramos, about the exhibition and the questions it raises.

The episode also turns to Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Untitled (Revenge) (1991), one of the late Cuban-American artist's candy sculptures. The work is made from hundreds of wrapped candies, a form Gonzalez-Torres used to make ideas of loss, exchange, and participation feel physically immediate. First exhibited in Madrid in 1991, it is now being shown there again for the first time since that debut.

The sculpture appears in Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Sweet Revenge at Museo Reina Sofía, which opened last week and runs until 12 October. Luke spoke with the exhibition's curators, Alejandro Cesarco and Nancy Spector, about the work and its return to the city where it was first seen.

Taken together, the two exhibitions point to a broader museum conversation: how objects and images acquire meaning through repetition, context, and time. One centers a national emblem that has been endlessly contested; the other revisits a work whose sweetness carries a more unsettled emotional charge. In both cases, the museum becomes a place not just of display, but of reconsideration.

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