This morning at 10 a.m., in partnership with Creative Time, 21c Museum Hotel Durham hoisted the eleventh public artwork in the nationwide Pledges of Allegiance series, Weeping Angel by artist Trevor Paglen.
Paglen’s flag features a weeping angel surrounded by code. Weeping Angel is the name for a hacking tool that the CIA reportedly developed to spy on citizens, in which internet-connected TVs would be retooled to be in a fake “off” mode but covertly send recordings back. The angels may also reference sci-fi villains from the Dr. Who series, or a term from quantum physics describing entities that cease to exist if one attempts to observe them.
Weeping Angel is part of Pledges of Allegiance, a serialized commission of sixteen flags created by sixteen acclaimed artists to reflect the current political climate. Paglen’s flag is the eleventh installment of the series, which has grown from two to seventeen partner locations since Creative Time initiated the project in June 2017. Creative Time previously worked with Paglen on The Last Pictures, a project that launched hundreds of images on an ultra-archival disc into geosynchronous orbit around Earth.
Paglen’s flag will be raised at the following seventeen locations:
- Creative Time Headquarters – 59 E 4th St, New York, NY
- 21c Museum Hotel Durham – 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
- Atlanta Contemporary – 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
- John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University – 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI 02906
- California College of the Arts – 1 111 8th St, San Francisco, CA
- The Commons, in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas -1340 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS
- Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University – 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY
- KMAC Museum – 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
- Mid-America Arts Alliance – 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
- MOCA Jacksonville – 333 North Laura Street Jacksonville, FL
- Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit – 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
- RISD Museum – 224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
- Texas State Galleries – 233 West Sessom Drive, San Marcos, TX
- The Union for Contemporary Art – 2423 N 24th Street, Omaha, NE
- 15. SPACE – 536 Congress St, Portland, ME
- 16. University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum – 3821 USF Holly Dr, Tampa, FL
- 17. Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University – 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ
> Learn more about the project
ABOUT TREVOR PAGLEN
Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines. Among his chief concerns are learning how to see the historical moment we live in and developing the means to imagine alternative futures. He is currently the artist-in-residence at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.
ABOUT CREATIVE TIME
Creative Time, the New York based public arts non-profit, is committed to working with artists on the dialogues, debates, and dreams of our time. Creative Time presents the most innovative art in the public realm, providing new platforms to amplify artists’ voices, including the Creative Time Summit, an international conference convening at the intersection of art and social justice.
Since 1974, Creative Time has produced over 350 groundbreaking public art projects that ignite the imagination, explore ideas that shape society, and engage millions of people around the globe. Since its inception, the non-profit organization has been at the forefront of socially engaged public art, seeking to convert the power of artists’ ideas into works that inspire and challenge the public. Creative Time projects stimulate dialogue on timely issues, and initiate a dynamic experience between artists, sites, and audiences.
