Let America Be America Again Exhibition
A visual conversation with Langston Hughes
At Busboys and Poets 14th & V, Andrew Wohl’s ink-on-metal works ask what kind of country America is still becoming.
Inspired by Hughes’s enduring call, the exhibition turns commemoration into a question of memory, responsibility, and civic imagination.
Artist
Andrew Wohl
On View
Through September 12, 2026
Location
Busboys and Poets, 14th & V NW
Featured work by Andrew Wohl
The Dream Is Still Unfinished
Inspired by Langston Hughes, the exhibition asks visitors to look past patriotic nostalgia and sit with the harder, more necessary question: who has America promised itself to be?
Wohl presents America as a nation suspended between promise and peril. His visual narratives confront the symbols of national pride, then ask what happens when those symbols are strained by exclusion, fear, and unfinished justice.
The work is not only a warning. It is an invitation to recognize democracy as something living, fragile, and made through the choices citizens make now.
Why Now
As America approaches 250, this exhibition asks whether commemoration can become reflection, and whether reflection can become responsibility.
The Story Arc
The exhibition moves from anniversary to warning to responsibility, asking each visitor to imagine what comes next.
01
America at 250
The exhibition begins with the national milestone, then pushes beyond celebration into honest civic reflection.
02
Wohl’s Warning
The artwork turns familiar American imagery into a charged visual language of promise, peril, and consequence.
03
The Visitor’s Choice
The story lands on responsibility: the next chapter is not inherited, it is made through choices today.
Three Works, One Question
What does America become when its symbols are tested by fear, violence, memory, and the unfinished work of democracy?
Destroying the 250th
Fetal Flag
See It at 14th & V
Come for the art, stay for the food, books, conversation, and civic imagination that make Busboys and Poets a gathering place.
Venue
Busboys and Poets, 14th & V
Address
2021 14th St NW, Washington, DC
Exhibition
On view through September 12, 2026
Contact
art@busboysandpoets.com