David Hammons. African-American Flag. 1990 | MoMA

Hammons’s African American Flag reimagines the United States flag, replacing its colors with the red, green, and black of the Pan-African Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded in 1914.

Hammons created this flag—one in an edition of five—for the groundbreaking exhibition Black USA curated by Jan Christiaan Braun at the Museum Overholland in Amsterdam in spring 1990. Hammons’s flag was mounted on a pole across the square from the United States consulate, which was flying its own flag. Although flags are often imagined as unchanging symbols of national identity, the meaning of the African American Flag shifts over time and with each new context.

Additional text from 2022