Dread Scott: Anti-American

Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. He doesn’t accept the economic foundations, social relations, and governing ideas of America, and his work encourages audiences to explore important questions based upon these perspectives.

Scott’s talk “Anti-American” will look at a sampling of his art from the past 30 years, which includes a range of mediums from performance and photography to screenprinting, installation, and video. 

Keynote lecturer Dread Scott is a visual artist whose work is exhibited across the US and internationally. In 1989, while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, his art became the center of national controversy for its transgressive use of the American flag. President George H. W. Bush called his art “disgraceful,” and the entire US Senate denounced and outlawed the work. Dread became part of a landmark Supreme Court case when he and others defied the federal law outlawing his art by burning flags on the steps of the US Capitol. In 2019, he presented Slave Rebellion Reenactment, a community-engaged project that reenacted the largest rebellion of enslaved people in US history.  

Cohosted by the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) through their joint program in art history, the Keithley Symposium is a biennial event that brings together artists, scholars, thought leaders, and community members to explore the role of visual arts in contemporary society.  

The Keithley Symposium is made possible through the generous support of Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley.