I scooped the Museum of Modern Art on Twitter, regarding its observance of Pride Week.
On Thursday, I tweeted about the museum’s prominent display (in front of the picture window overlooking its Sculpture Garden) of the iconic “Rainbow Flag,” as it is titled on its wall label. (The museum’s collection website gives it a different name—“LGBT Flag.”)
Two days later, MoMA posted its own tweet about its current display of this enduring gay pride symbol, with a link to its informative 2015 interview with Gilbert Baker, the self-described “big drag queen” who “knew how to sew” and designed the flag for San Francisco’s Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade of June 25, 1978.
What MoMA doesn’t reveal in the Baker interview (or on its collection website) is that its flag, while a 2015 gift of the designer, is not one of his original hand-dyed and stitched banners. It’s a later “mass-produced version,” acquired “in order to celebrate the accessibility and worldwide adoption of this humble masterpiece of design” (as described on the flag’s display label, mounted on the pillar from which the flag is hung, above).
The label correctly identifies the flag’s material as nylon. But the collection website (which says it has “no image available” for the flag) says it’s silk. As the MoMA/Baker interview transcript reveals, nylon was ultimately chosen as a more practical alternative to cotton (the original material used), because “it’s very durable and…lights beautifully.”
All of which is to say that if it is serious about celebrating “this humble masterpiece of design,” MoMA should address the errors and omissions in its online entry for it.
Still, the museum does deserve kudos for directly connecting its banner to our current moment, in the concluding paragraph of its display label:
Two weeks after entering MoMA’s collection, the Rainbow Flag was first unfurled in the museum galleries on June 26, 2015, the day the U.S. Supreme Court made the historic decision to allow same-sex marriage in all states. One year later, in the wake of the recent massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida—the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history [as distinguished from historic massacres of Native Americans?]—the Rainbow Flag continues to stand as a powerful and evocative symbol of tolerance, community, diversity and love.
Meanwhile, in the flag’s city of origin, modern museum staffers weren’t merely elucidating. They were marching!
AAAAAAAND WE’RE ON THE MOVE #MuseumsWithPride 😛 pic.twitter.com/j191gNwgLN
— SFMOMA (@SFMOMA) June 26, 2016