Bob Yates is a regular opinion columnist for Boulder Reporting Lab. He is a former member of the Boulder City Council and now serves on the boards of several local nonprofits, including the Museum of Boulder.
It’s always helpful to start with facts.
• Fact: Last December, the Museum of Boulder launched a fun competition for kids and adults to see what creative flag they could design that would reflect Boulder’s character and spirit. (Disclosure: While I currently serve as chair of the museum’s board of directors, I write here solely in my personal capacity.)
• Fact: Over the winter, children and adults submitted nearly 200 flag ideas to the Museum of Boulder. The museum did not limit flag design submissions to people who live within Boulder city limits.
• Fact: More than 2,100 readers of Boulder Reporting Lab participated in an informal survey about which of the flag submission finalists they liked best.
• Fact: A diverse panel of volunteers judged the nearly 200 flag design submissions and last month selected the one they thought best reflected Boulder’s character and spirit, using guidance provided by the North American Vexillological Association (people who know flags).
• Fact: The Museum of Boulder is an independent nonprofit founded in 1944. The City of Boulder was not involved in the museum’s competition, although a city employee did volunteer as one of the judges on his own time.
• Fact: No taxpayer money was spent, and there is no plan by the City of Boulder to adopt a city flag.
Notwithstanding these facts — which were well reported in the press and on social media over the course of five months — some community members have gotten fussed about the museum’s friendly flag contest. Many mistakenly believed the city itself was adopting an official city flag and that taxpayer money had been spent on the process.
Others decried the fact that the person whose design was chosen by the judges did not live in Boulder. In fact, identifying information about contestants was hidden from judges to eliminate bias.
Dozens of people have taken to Nextdoor, vigorously protesting the flag design selected by the museum’s judges. Many more have written to Boulder City Council insisting council not adopt the winner of the art competition as the city’s official flag. Believe me, city council has bigger problems.
Some became so upset they launched a Change.org petition, signed by nearly 500 people, rejecting the flag design selected by the museum’s judges.
This is Boulder, so I guess it’s not surprising that people use passionate language to disagree about art. But no taxpayer money was spent on the museum’s competition, and city staff has expressed little interest in exploring a city flag at this time. That said, dozens of cities in Colorado do have city flags, and perhaps a flag of some design would be appropriate for Boulder someday.
Art is subjective. Indeed, the flag selected by the museum’s judges actually finished fourth in the Boulder Reporting Lab poll of the 10 finalists. I was not on the museum’s selection committee, but had I been, I probably would have picked a different flag myself.
That’s the wonder of art: Each person decides what they find beautiful.
The kerfuffle over the museum’s friendly flag competition reminds me of a similar brouhaha in 2014, when the Boulder Public Library selected a sculpture for the front of the main downtown library building. Out of 367 artwork submissions, the library’s selection panel chose a symbolic “YES!” in giant red aluminum letters.
But backlash over the winning design became so intense from some community members that city staff abandoned the installation before it was ever put up. They said no to “YES!”
The chair of the Library Commission at the time observed: “Good, bold public art will never be universally liked.”
So it is with the design selected in the Museum of Boulder’s flag competition. There will never be unanimous agreement on which flag is best. But a discussion about why Boulder does not have a flag when so many other cities do is exactly the kind of community engagement the museum hoped to generate.
It is the obligation of museums to provoke thought, creativity, imagination and dialogue. With the flag competition, the Museum of Boulder fulfilled that duty. It is up to the rest of us to have civil discussions about it.
The museum’s deputy director for community engagement, Emily Zinn, put it well: The flag competition was never just about a flag. It was a chance to start a genuine community conversation about Boulder’s identity.
Who are we? What do we stand for? What symbols carry that meaning? Does Boulder need a flag, and if so, what should it look like? Who should decide?
These are thought-provoking questions that can distract us for a few moments from the far more serious and intractable problems facing our community, country and world. It is nice to take a break from those bigger challenges and contemplate what colors should go on a three-by-five-foot piece of cloth.
So let’s chill out, have fun with art and disagree respectfully. And let’s recognize that differences in taste are part of what makes us human.
