Alfredo Jaar’s ‘A Logo for America’ returns to New York, challenging the meaning of “American”

Nearly four decades after appearing in Times Square, Alfredo Jaar’s A Logo for America returns to New York in a solo exhibition at Galerie Lelong, revisiting questions of language, representation and American identity.

Opening September 10th, 2026, the exhibition traces the history and enduring relevance of Jaar’s landmark 1987 public artwork, alongside his participation in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh.

Commissioned by the Public Art Fund for its Messages to the Public series, A Logo for America first appeared on the Spectacolor billboard in Times Square in April 1987. Its animation challenged the habit of using “America” to refer exclusively to the United States, pointing instead to the continent’s many nations and cultures.

Nearly 40 years later, amid the United States’ Semiquincentennial, the work takes on fresh urgency, asking who has the right to the word “American” and how language shapes collective identity.

From Times Square to the gallery

A newly digitised version of the original animation anchors the exhibition, while Jaar’s original storyboard drawings will be shown publicly for the first time. Photographs, lightboxes and videos trace later versions of the work, from a barge off Miami Beach to television screens, revealing how its imagery has shifted across media and political contexts.

The selection also follows the work’s passage into wider cultural consciousness, showing how a deceptively simple graphic gesture can become a potent symbol of contested identity.

Art rooted in reality

For more than four decades, Alfredo Jaar has worked across photography, film, installation and new media, examining political and social realities through a rigorous language of images. Genocide, displacement, migration and global inequality recur throughout his practice, alongside a persistent questioning of who controls representation and whose stories remain unseen.

A Logo for America distils this approach into a concise yet provocative gesture, turning a familiar word into a question of power, geography and belonging. Returning to New York, the work asks what it means to inhabit—and claim—a shared American identity.