2026 is America’s 250th Anniversary. Museums across the US are offering options for celebrating this milestone. We’ve gathered images and information from some of the compilations we found most intriguing. These exhibitions broaden the lens through which we view the past. They make space for indigenous people, women, immigrants, and enslaved Americans, while giving a hat-tip to the founding fathers and to flags and other symbols of praise and protest.
For Which It Stands…
Through July 25th
Fairfield University Art Museum
1073 North Benson Road
Fairfield, CT 06824
https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/exhibitions/catalog/2026/for-which-it-stands/
In our backyard, and well worth a visit, is For Which It Stands… is at the Fairfield University Art Museum for just two more weeks. This exhibition examines depictions of the American flag through more than 70 works by a diverse group of artists, beginning during WWI with Childe Hassam’s shimmering Italian Day, May 1918 and continuing to the present day. Work in a variety of media is included from Jasper Johns, Faith Ringgold, Robert Rauschenberg, Shepard Fairey, and Julie Mehretu, Gordon Parks, and others. For Which It Stands… challenges viewers to consider who the American flag truly represents and whether justice is available to all.
Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles
Through January 31st
Autry Museum of the American West
4700 Western Heritage Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462
https://www.theautry.org/exhibitions/life-liberty-and-los-angeles
The expansive exhibition, Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles, explores the meanings behind some of the most powerful words in the Declaration of Independence. Los Angeles, from its beginnings, has been a place of competing claims to life, liberty, and happiness. This exhibition shares the stories of diverse Angelenos and how their ideas of life, liberty, and happiness inspired the city’s growth and amplified the opportunities and contradictions expressed in the nation’s founding principles. The 125 objects on display are deliberately eclectic. Political buttons, family photographs and papers, commissioned installations, even a 1967 Mark VII vehicle from Disneyland’s Autopia attraction and a can of Los Angeles smog, are installed alongside contemporary artworks.
American Stories: From Revolution to Rockwell
Through October 26th
Norman Rockwell Museum
9 Glendale Road, PO Box 308
Stockbridge, MA 01262
https://www.nrm.org
Oil on board, Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, NRACT.1973.117. Photo by Riley Andersen
This sweeping exhibition portrays how artists – from the Revolutionary War era to today – emblazoned the ideals and evolving story of America. American Stories: From Revolution to Rockwell illuminates how iconic imagery created over centuries helped to reflect and shape what it means to be American. The exhibition includes original paintings, prints, book illustrations, broadsides, posters, advertisements, and digital media, from the Museum’s expansive holdings as well as major loans from important institutions and private collectors across the country, including the Smithsonian Museum. As New England Public Media notes: “From iconic masterpieces to everyday media, these works chart the nation’s … enduring pursuit of freedom. The exhibition places Rockwell’s iconic images in a broader national context, spotlighting illustration’s role in illuminating America’s ambitions, achievements, and struggles.”
An Indigenous Present
Through September 27th
Frist Art Museum
919 Broadway
Nashville, TN 37203
An Indigenous Present, a thematic exhibition spanning 100 years of modern and contemporary indigenous art, is another example of a reimagined view of the past. The exhibition includes significant works by 15 artists who use strategies of abstraction to represent personal and collective narratives, describe specific and imagined places, and build upon cultural and aesthetic traditions. Co-organized by artist Jeffrey Gibson, member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent and representative for the US at the Venice Biennial in 2024, and independent curator Jenelle Porter, the exhibition offers an expansive consideration of indigenous art practices, highlighting a continuum of elders and emerging makers.
America 250: Common Threads
Through July 27th
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
600 Museum Way
Bentonville, Arkansas 72712
https://crystalbridges.org/events/america-250-common-threads
In America 250: Common Threads, an early engraving of the Declaration of Independence anchors a group of historic documents displayed alongside textiles, paintings, toys, and other works from 1776 to the present. The exhibition considers how artists and national leaders document American history. The exhibition explores the symbols artists turn to when celebrating or commenting on the United States: George Washington’s many faces, eagles appearing across books, baskets, and coverlets, flags seen as quilts or as documentation of the moon landing, and more. Contemporary artists featured in the exhibition, such as Robert Colescott, Kay WalkingStick, Howard Finster, and our own, James Bassler, continue to revisit national symbols and explore their resonance. The exhibition also features live quilting, as local quilters and quilting guilds work in the galleries to piece quilt squares made by K-12 students across Arkansas and designed by artist Basil Kincaid.