Ostensibly based on factual events, the narrative of American history often depends on who is telling the story and in what medium. Take our flag -- please. Once an emblem of unity, it is now a symbol of division. Art may not have to function as anything other than art, but let’s see what happens when the nation’s social fabric is its canvas. About Dread Scott Dread Scott is an artist based in New York who has a history of social activism going back to 1989, when he joined a flag-burning ceremony on the steps of our nation’s Capitol that led to a landmark decision by the Supreme Court protecting free speech. His work in performance, photography and sculpture has been exhibited at MoMA/PS1, the Walker Art Center, CAM St. Louis, and street corners across the country. It is also in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. In 2021, Scott was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship; in 2019, he was named an Open Society Soros Equality Fellow. He also has won fellowships from United States Artists and Creative Capital. In 2019, his restaging, in New Orleans, of this country’s largest slave rebellion won widespread attention, as did his NFT video, White Male for Sale, when it was successfully auctioned at Christie’s last year. About Rujeko Hockley Rujeko Hockley is a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she co-curated its 2019 biennial and organized the acclaimed exhibition, “An Incomplete History of Protest (2017), as well as solo exhibitions by Jennifer Packer, Toyin Ojih Odutola and (with LACMA’s Christine Y. Kim) curated the Whitney’s 2021 Julie Mehretu retrospective. Previously, she was a curator at the Brooklyn Museum, where her credits include “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 (organized with Catherine Morris), and work on shows by LaToya Ruby Frazier and Kehinde Wiley. She also has served as a curatorial assistant at the Studio Museum in Harlem and is on the board of Art Matters. Born in Zimbabwe, Hockley grew up in Washington, D.C. and is married to the artist Hank Willis Thomas. About Linda Yablonsky Linda Yablonsky is a renowned critic and arts journalist based in New York. Over the last thirty years her byline has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times and T Magazine, Artforum, W Magazine, Art News, Bloomberg, and many more. In 2002 she helped to pioneer the streaming arts radio channel, WPS1 for MoMA PS1. She also founded and directed NightLight Readings (1991-1999), a monthly writers-in-performance series held at The Drawing Center and other art spaces in New York, and from 2002-2004 was literature curator for The Kitchen. Currently, she contributes the monthly column, New York Insider, to The Art Newspaper and is writing a major biography of the artist Jeff Koons.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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