The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Installed in the Museum’s lobby, Dave Cole’s work Flags of the World (Study #3) is one of a series of American flags that the artist has painstakingly handcrafted. Each flag in the series is composed from all of the red, white, and blue found in the 192 flags of the countries that are members of the United Nations, and is accompanied by the resulting leftover fragments, displayed in an adjacent laundry basket. Carefully sewn together in the manner of a quilt, the iconic symbol is turned by Cole into an object that engenders contemplation on the character of the United States in an age of growing globalization.