We also hope you had a lovely MLK Day! There's always a risk that even the most powerful legacies can be hollowed out into just a date on a calendar. But it's during these trying times that cultural institutions can help bring the urgency of that history back to life, revealing how it continues to shape and undercut our lives.
Stass Shpanin was born in Azerbaijan, formerly the Soviet Union, and has lived in the US since he was a teenager, so he is no stranger to countries and ideologies coming and going, and the imagery associated with them transforming along the way. Images of birds, animals and plants have appeared in the insignia, fl ags and offi cial documents of many states and municipalities for millennia, their meanings often similar yet adjusted to a particular context.