How this artist visualized the scale of human loss to COVID-19

For two months last year, anyone who passed by Washington D.C.’s RFK Stadium, less than two miles from Capitol Hill, was faced with a sea of small white flags.

Before it was dismantled in November, the work totaled 250,000 white flags sprawled over several large fields, in neat rows. Each flag represented a single person who had died of the virus in the United States at the time. Visitors were able to personalize and plant their own flags to commemorate the dead.

Titled “IN AMERICA How Could This Happen …,” the public art installation was created by Maryland artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, who told the PBS NewsHour that it was partly a protest against how the federal government had handled the COVID-19 pandemic.

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