A PBS NewsHour segment features Clark, the Winifred L. Arms Professor in the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Art and the History of Art, and her exhibits Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know and Heavenly Bound, currently on view at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Mass.
One exhibit centers on the plain white towel that Confederate troops used as a truce flag to signal Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender in 1865. “My thought was, what would this nation be like if that was the image of the Civil War that had endured, that something was surrendered?” says Clark. “But, instead, we have the Confederate Battle Flag in our consciousness.” Museum visitors are invited to help weave a replica of the truce flag.
The other showcases a sky dotted with stars made from Clark’s own hair, “honoring the guidance [the stars] provided enslaved people escaping to freedom on the Underground Railroad,” says reporter Jared Bowen.