FOR-SITE and Fort Mason Art present Andy Goldsworthy: Red Flags, a site-specific exhibition by the internationally acclaimed artist, on view at Fort Mason Center’s Pier 2 Gateway Pavilion. Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the monumental work reflects on geographic borders, political boundaries, and the ties among people, land, and nation.
Public Reception: Friday, July 10, 2026, 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Marking its West Coast debut, Andy Goldsworthy’s Red Flags (2020) features 50 5 x 8-foot flags, each stained red with earth collected from one of the 50 U.S. states. Rather than displaying emblems that differentiate each state, Goldsworthy’s flags asks viewers to consider what unifies them – and the country. In shades ranging from pale ochre to deep sienna, the 50 flags point to U.S. diversity while insisting upon a shared humanity. “I hope the flags will be received in the same spirit with which all the red earths were collected,” says the artist, “as a gesture of solidarity and support.”
Red Flags was originally exhibited at New York’s Rockefeller Center in 2020, where it hung from flagpoles that typically display the flags of United Nations member nations, and later appeared in the artist’s 2025 retrospective Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, at the National Galleries Scotland.
To complement the installation, a focused selection of Goldsworthy’s works are on view in the Gateway Pavilion’s Main Gallery, foregrounding red earth as a throughline in his practice – an elemental substance he has worked with for decades.
In the artist’s visual lexicon, the material evokes both the viewer’s connection with the land and the connection between places themselves. Having encountered the material in environments ranging from his property in Scotland to the South Australian Outback, Goldsworthy has described red earth as “the earth’s veins.”
A film originating from Red Flags screens in the Gateway Pavilion’s Gray Box.
The exhibition follows Goldsworthy’s 2022 Fort Mason installation Firehouse and continues FOR-SITE’s longstanding collaboration with the artist, including Spire (2008) and Wood Line (2011) in the San Francisco Presidio, works that have become enduring parts of the region’s cultural landscape.
Andy Goldsworthy: Red Flags is organized by FOR-SITE and presented with Fort Mason Art, with generous exhibition support from Haines Gallery, FOR-SITE’s Board of Directors, and Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. Installation services are provided by Fides Industrial.
British artist Andy Goldsworthy (b. 1956, lives and works in Dumfriesshire, Scotland) is internationally recognized for his sculptures, installations, photographs, and films that engage directly with the natural world. Working with materials such as stone, wood, leaves, and earth, his practice emphasizes process, time, and transformation, and viewers’ relationships with the landscape. Goldsworthy’s works have been exhibited in major sites and museums internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland; and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK, as well as permanent works at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Presidio of San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Stanford University, CA; and Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY.
Andy Goldsworthy (continued). He has been the subject of several substantial monographic publications, as well as two feature-length documentaries: Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time (2002) and Leaning into the Wind (2017).
FOR-SITE. Established in 2003 by founding Executive Director and Chief Curator Cheryl Haines, FOR-SITE is dedicated to the creation, understanding, and presentation of art about place. FOR-SITE’s highly acclaimed projects include Black Gold: Stories Untold (2025), at Fort Point National Historic Site in San Francisco; Lands End (2021-2022) at San Francisco’s former Cliff House; Sanctuary (2017-18) at Fort Mason Chapel; Home Land Security (2016) at Fort Winfield Scott in the San Francisco Presidio; and @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz (2014-2015) in the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
July 1 through July 30, 2026
Please note the exhibition is closed Saturday and Sunday, July 4-5 and July 11-12, 2026.
Wednesday through Saturday:
12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Sunday: 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Public reception: Friday, July 10, 2026
5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Friday, July 24, 2026, Fort Mason Night Market:
12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Gateway Pavilion, Pier 2, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco
FREE
FOR-SITE
FOR-SITE.org
(415) 362-9330
info@FOR-SITE.org
Andy Goldsworthy:
AndyGoldsworthyStudio.com
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