US @ 250: National Creative Assembly

As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026, official celebrations will attempt to define what this country has been and what it means today. But the most important American stories have never belonged solely to institutions, monuments, or people in power. They have always belonged to ordinary people who organized, created, resisted, cared for one another, and expanded the meaning of who gets to belong.

The US@250 National Creative Assembly is a national cultural strategy campaign led by Amplifier in partnership with the Think Big Alliance, the Rural Democracy Initiative, Topos, and Pop Culture Collaborative. Together, we are commissioning artists from all 50 states, plus DC, to create work rooted in a shared vision:

In America, the people are supposed to be in charge.

The word supposed matters. It doesn’t claim things are fine. It names an aspiration that has always been a goal, sometimes honored, often betrayed, never finished. It holds space for pride in what people have built alongside honest reckoning with what has been denied.

At the heart of the campaign is a national creative assembly of 51 artists creating a unified yet deeply diverse body of artwork exploring belonging, collective agency, multiracial solidarity, accountability, creativity, and the ongoing work of building a country worthy of its promise. Artists will be selected based on artistic excellence, community credibility, and lived experience, ensuring the work is rooted in authentic local perspectives rather than symbolic representation.

We’re not dropping 51 pieces at once. The collection is being made in three rounds across 2026. The first 14 works are available now, with more arriving through the year. Every piece is free to download and free to use, in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. Tape it in a window, hand it out at a march, drop it in your feed. It’s free because the art belongs to the people it’s about.

Meet the first artists:

We’re thrilled to release 15 new artworks from the Assembly’s first round: Brian “Box” Brown (Pennsylvania), Caitlin Blunnie (Maryland), Cannupa Hanska Luger (North Dakota), Das Frank (Nevada), Jeni Jenkins (Ohio), Julia Chon (Virginia), Layqa Nuna Yawar (New Jersey), Monyee Chao (Washington), Nicholas Lampert (Wisconsin), Nikki Scioscia (South Carolina), Roger Peet (Oregon), Shirien Damra (Illinois), Thomas Wimberley (Louisiana), Tracie Ching (District of Columbia), and Yocelyn Riojas (Texas).