Unfurling the Flag: Reflections on American Patriotism

March 16–September 27, 2026

Marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Unfurling the Flag: Reflections on American Patriotism explores the complex ideological and political power of patriotism in the United States. Over time, conceptions of loyalty, allegiance, and national belonging have evolved, and patriotism has been likewise reimagined and reinvented through national conversations, policies, protests, and bloodshed. This presentation explores the distinctive ways that leaders and common citizens alike have revisited patriotism through historic writings, speeches, maps, photographs, drawings, and other items from Yale Library’s collections.

Additionally, the exhibition highlights the implications of marshaling patriotism to justify foreign interventions, establish hierarchies for national priorities, register dissent, and draw boundaries of civic inclusion and exclusion. What is at stake when we talk about patriotism? How are its ideals informed by the country’s founding documents and expressed in today’s conversations? Unfurling the Flag makes visible the varied meanings that citizens, officials, activists, intellectuals, artists, and others have assigned to national allegiance, and invites gallery visitors to reflect on how our notion of patriotism might continue to unfold in the future.

Silent Springs, Windswept Seas: Rachel Carson’s Environmental Vision

May 18–October 4, 2026

In her acceptance speech upon receiving the National Book Award for The Sea Around Us (1951), biologist and author Rachel Carson (1907–1964) explained: “If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.” Carson dedicated her life and work to nature and the environment. From her early childhood talent for observing wildlife, to her time as a government employee in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, to her emergence as a best-selling nonfiction writer who expressed an unwavering curiosity about nature, Carson’s writing was at once elegant and scientifically grounded. She is best known for her book Silent Spring (1962), which documented the harms of pesticide use and galvanized generations of environmental activists around the world.