NEW YORK, NY.- Between 2011 and 2016 artist Mel Ziegler journeyed through all 50 states and replaced distressed American flags flying at civic and private locations — city halls, post offices, hospitals, homes, and schools — with new flags. These 50 tattered flags form a powerful artwork, Flag Exchange, which spans the geography of our union, and represents the spectrum of our allegiance.

The American flag offers a perfect mirror for all of us. For citizens and others alike, it is the shining beacon of hope and resilience of the United States. It also transcends national borders as a symbol of opportunity and unnamable possibility. At the same time, for many throughout our world, this flag is a nationalist and contemptible signal of imperialism. As with the most charged and enduring symbols, it is simultaneously revered, cherished, feared, and despised — it is worth dying for.

A Living Thing: Flag Exchange at Federal Hall models the spirit in which we may continue to seek a more perfect union. Here, at the inaugural site of our democracy, Ziegler’s work presents a hopeful and direct image of these United States of America, one that is grounded in conversation with people unlike ourselves, coursing with empathy for their perspectives, and reveals the subtle yet powerfully disarming gift of creativity. Ziegler’s act of sly and generous alchemy is a potent reminder that artists do new and vital things for our public life, by finding the common ground that we have otherwise lost.

Mel Ziegler is widely known for his collaborative work with his late partner Kate Ericson — beginning in the early 1980s Ericson Ziegler pioneered the emergence of socially engaged practice and community engagement as vital forms of contemporary art. In the broadest sense, Ziegler's work asserts the value of rural identities and aesthetics and locates authentic spaces within the increasingly fragmented American experience. For Ziegler, the American landscape is a place of deep distress and profound optimism, yet his work finds new possibilities through monumentalizing and honoring the everyday.

Ziegler is Paul E. Shwab Chair in Fine Arts, Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Art at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the founder of the Sandhills Institute in Rushville, Nebraska, which is a catalyst for developing new models of artistic citizenship in America’s heartland. Ziegler is represented by Galerie Perrotin.

Federal Hall stands at the birthplace of American government. It is where George Washington took the oath of office as the first President and where the first U.S. Congress invented a system of governance that still guides the country today, including enactment of the Bill of Rights.

The current building was conceived as the architectural embodiment of the nation’s founding ideals. It was erected in the mid-19th century as a U.S. Custom House and later U.S. Sub-Treasury, after the original Federal Hall was demolished. It is one of the nation’s finest examples of Greek Revival public architecture — its design inspired by the Parthenon of ancient Athens and the Pantheon of republican Rome.

Federal Hall was designated a National Historic Site in 1939 and then a National Memorial 16 years later, to commemorate the historic events that happened at the site. Today, stewardship of the building is entrusted to the National Park Service.