Americans have long preserved objects as a way of telling stories about themselves. Beginning after the Revolutionary War and gathering momentum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people turned to early American things to construct a national history and sense of collective identity—an impulse often driven by lingering insecurity about the young nation’s perceived cultural provinciality compared to Europe.

This concentrated exhibition illuminates how makers both historical and contemporary have employed a kaleidoscopic variety of media to express love of country while also revealing the complexities and contradictions embedded in such expressions.