Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Ahchipaptunhe, Alejandro Emilio Aguirre, Joseph Beuys, Caleb Brown, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Katrina Buckles, Enrique Chagoya, Luek Collins, Combat Hippies, Julianna Dail, Juan Genoves, Nicole Goodwin, Sister Mary Corita Kent, Yilong Li, Ian Manseau, Joshua Prince, Kevin Sparkowich, Roscoe B. Thicke III Curated by Steph Andrews and the Center for Military-Affiliated Students Where Have All the Flowers Gone? marks the first public presentation including The New School’s art collection in over six years in a rare exhibition that places works by contemporary artists who have served in the armed forces in direct dialogue with the postwar and contemporary canon. At a university shaped by a century of progressive thought and critical theory, this convergence of veteran and civilian voices presents a powerful and unlikely exchange—one that foregrounds perspectives rarely (if ever) made visible in contemporary art discourse. Taking its title from Pete Seeger’s 1955 song about the cyclicality and futility of war, and building upon Sister Mary Corita Kent’s 1969 serigraph Manflowers (in which Seeger’s refrain appears), the exhibition brings together artists who return to that question anew. Where Have All the Flowers Gone? offers a humanizing take on service that resists both heroic abstraction and easy condemnation. Instead, the exhibition reveals the grey areas where loyalty and doubt, service and conscience, coexist. From postwar Europe to contemporary America, this selection of work unearths shared ground beneath those who have worn the uniform and those who have observed from without. In this collaboration, uncomplicated boundaries between consent and dissent are broken, making space for nuance and a shared need for purpose, belonging, protection and survival.