Dread Scott has the distinction of being one of the few artists to have had his work denounced by a United States president. In 1989, when he was an undergraduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he showed What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?, an installation in which viewers could respond to the titular question while standing on an American flag. Politicians were outraged—George H. W. Bush called the work “disgraceful.”
“And so I’m like, ‘Wait, this is great. This is a job I want to do for the rest of my life!’ ” Scott told Cuban artist Tania Bruguera in a talk Thursday night at the Brooklyn Museum. “I knew it wouldn’t happen to me or other artists again, but it showed the power of art.”
