Since November 2020, the Rituals in the Making research team has collaborated with Bethesda-based visual artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg on her public installations memorializing those who have died of COVID-19.

In America: How Could This Happen…

In fall 2020, thousands visited the installation “In America: How Could This Happen…,” located at the D.C. Armory, just two miles east of the U.S. Capitol. People traveled from across the country to see personalized flags for those who had died. With one flag planted for each life lost to the pandemic, the artwork at its height comprised over 256,000 flags. Shortly after Thanksgiving, the installation came down, but Firstenberg was determined to continue the work of memorializing COVID loss. She partnered with Dr. Sarah Wagner and a team of students and faculty from George Washington University and University of Maryland to create a digital version of the installation. Wagner and members of the Rituals in the Making research team continued to assist Firstenberg throughout 2021, as she prepared for her second, larger installation, In America: Remember.

Left: Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg with Dr. Sarah Wagner. Right: Aerial photos of “In America” installation in Washington D.C. Photo on left courtesy of Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg. Photos on the right by Bruce Guthrie.

In America: Remember

From September 17 to October 3, 2021, a sea of white flags covered the lawn just north of the Washington Monument on the National Mall. The installation, In America: Remember, was the largest public art project to visit the Mall since the AIDS quilt, stretching across 22 acres, 143 sections, and 3.8 miles of walking paths. The National Park Services estimates that approximate 1.2 million people visited the site during those three weeks.

Of the more than 700,000 flags that marked the individual lives lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, some 20,000 bore personal inscriptions memorializing family, friends, coworkers, classmates, and neighbors.

Flags dedicated to Nuvia M. Montes, Rev. Rafael R. Bonilla, Hugo O. Fuentes, Ralph Bianco, Eunice “La Sexy” Rodriguez, Ronald B. Rogers and Wendell Arthur Mudgett. Photos by Sarah Wagner

Members of the Rituals in the Making research team and student volunteers from George Washington University assisted Firstenberg in geolocating and photographing the personalized flags so that they would appear on the installation’s digital map.

The research team continues to partner with Suzanne and IAR volunteers Alicia Murphy and Valerie Mathews in building an archive for the artwork, its 20,000 flags (physical and digital forms), and, through oral histories, a record of the the extraordinary stories behind the installation. See, for example, these dispatches on efforts to clean, store, curate, and care for the flags at Suzanne’s studio:

• “In America: Remember “Sleuthing” – Tracing and Tracking Down Flags from the Installation,” by Valerie Mathews, Alicia Murphy, and Sarah Wagner
• “‘It Feels Like We’re Putting Them to Rest’: The final day of cleaning and ordering the flags from the In America: Remember installation,” by Sarah Wagner