Flag for Ellen from Something in the Wind, South Street Seaport, New York, NY

Ree Morton participated, alongside Mary Miss, Jackie Winsor, and Ann McCoy, in the Allen’s Four Young Americans exhibition, curated by Athena Tacha and Ellen Johnson in 1973. Morton had been working on installations using tree trunks and logs that, as she put it, defined “areas” operating between pictorial and sculptural modes. In 1975, to fulfill the public service requirement of a grant awarded by New York State, she staged a project called Something in the Wind at the South Street Seaport. As she described, “I flew over 100 nylon flags on a 19th-century fishing schooner... Each flag had the name of some friend or member of my family; people I feel good about or connected to. It was like identifying myself by naming all the people who surround me. […] Each flag is a present for the person it’s about. The work goes full circle. I got to think about each person as I made the flags; then I flew them together; then I gave the person that time and that object.” Ellen Johnson, to whom this flag was dedicated, traveled to see the installation in person, recounting later that “the flags were stunning flapping in the wind.”