'Independency': Stars and Stripes Offer Window Into American History

John Monsky is a collector of stories.

They are tales of resilience and ingenuity, bravery and tragedy, told from the frontlines of war, historic campaign trails and even the surface of the moon, spanning the last two and a half centuries.

They all live within the stars and stripes of American flags — or, at the very least, what’s left of them.

“I don’t see myself as owner of these flags. Nobody should,” Monsky said. “You’re just a guardian until it passes on to the next generation, and eventually will end up in a museum.”

For a limited time, that is precisely where they have landed. Nearly Monsky’s entire collection of flags and historic textiles now hangs in the galleries of the Southampton Arts Center for the show, “Independency: The American Flag at 250 Years,” on view through July 16 alongside the work of abstract painter Sean Scully.

It is not lost on Southampton Arts Center Executive Director Christina Mossaides Strassfield that each artifact was a witness to watershed moments in American history. She can feel it when she looks at them, she said.

“Every generation should come visit this show,” she said. “The young will learn about history and people who’ve lived through parts of this history will be able to engage in it once again.”

Walking through the five galleries, each with a thematic grouping of memorabilia, Monsky can point to any given flag and tell its story. When he arrives at a political kerchief for Theodore Roosevelt Jr., it takes him back to when he was 10 years old, growing up in Jacksonville, Florida.

It was a gift from his mother, he said, and the start of his collection — which exceeds 60 flags and related relics.

“When I finished college, I called my dad and said, ‘I want to be a historian.’ And my dad said, ‘You’ll starve,’ so I went to law school,” Monsky said. “But I never let go of history, and so I started collecting these flags to keep up with it.”

A part-time Southampton resident, Monsky started a tradition at his home in New York City every June. On Flag Day, he would take one flag, place it on the mantle and talk about it with his four children, Harrison, Annabel, Gillian and Caitlin. Soon, they began inviting their friends, who invited their parents and, before Monsky knew it, he and his wife, Jennifer Weis, were moving furniture out of the living room to make more space for their guests.

One of them tipped off New York Historical Society, which asked Monsky to give a more formal presentation for them. And among that captivated audience was a staff member from Carnegie Hall, which would become the historian’s next venue.

There, he produced “Vietnam War: At Home and Abroad” in 2018, the first in the “American History Unbound” series of live, multi-media musical journeys through time.

“That’s when not knowing any better really serves you well,” Monsky said, “because they said, ‘What do you want to do next?’ And I said, ‘Well, I did the Vietnam War, but I want to do space.’ Space is important to me, too.”

As a boy raised in the shadow of the Vietnam War and, simultaneously, the height of the U.S. space program, he remembers standing on a railroad overpass, holding his father’s hand while they watched Apollo 17’s Saturn V rocket launch into space in 1972.

He has since collected a flag from Apollo missions 11 through 17, as well as a strip of the flag that astronaut Neil Armstrong planted on the moon.

“This is the EKG strip that NASA printed out when Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon,” Monsky said, pointing to the test record. “This is the first heartbeat on another planetary body. I hope some cardiologists come to the show that can read it for me.”

History comes alive through these flags and artifacts, Strassfield said. They were there at pivotal moments — landing on the Utah and Omaha Beaches on D-Day during the Normandy landings in World War II; marching to the tomb of Marquis de Lafayette, who had convinced the French to aid in the American Revolution, during World War I; carried by a messenger on horseback between battle lines of the Civil War; sitting atop the USS Constitution during the War of 1812.

Community service banners hung in neighborhood churches and gathering places, a star for each boy serving in World War II. A blue star meant a soldier was alive. A red star meant he was missing. A gold star meant he had died.

“Those really pull at my heartstrings,” Monsky said.

Walking through the galleries is emotional, Strassfield said, and serves as a reminder that the American flag belongs to everyone.

“I think that, in recent years, it’s been taken over,” she said. “I love seeing the American flag wave and I feel that seeing the show and the history behind the flag — and what the flag means at so many different stages in our young history — is very exciting, and I think we should celebrate it.”

“Independency: The American Flag at 250 Years,” curated by historian and writer John Monsky, will have an opening reception on Saturday, May 24, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Southampton Arts Center, 25 Jobs Lane, Southampton Village, and will remain on view through July 16. An artist panel talk will be held on Saturday, June 21, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 631-283-0967 or visit southamptonartscenter.org.