Stars, Stripes, and Symbols: America at 250

The exhibit is organized into six overlapping areas: American flags; founding figures; Uncle Sam, the eagle, and Columbia; American Martyrs; The Armed Forces; and the 1976 Bicentennial.

Much of the exhibit features the U.S. flag, of course, which is the focal point of one of the center's most well-known holdings - Joe Rosenthal's photograph of service members raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima. The photo on display of "Old Glory Goes Up on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima" was printed in 1997 from the entire original negative, as a note in Rosenthal's own hand says.

Another World War II-era treasure is an improvised U.S. flag from the American liberation of France in 1944, handmade to welcome the liberating army. The family of Pierre Colmant, who was in Paris when the city was liberated, gave it to UT faculty member Tom Hatfield, now 91, who was instrumental in establishing the Frank Denius Normandy Scholars Program at UT. Hatfield was a longtime dean of continuing education at UT and now is director of the Briscoe Center's Military History Institute.

The center's Dr. Whitney Smith Flag Research Center Collection proved to be a gold mine for this occasion. Smith is the late founder of the Flag Research Center, established 1960, and coined the word "vexillology" for the field of study. In this collection, visitors can see:

• A 1940s U.S. Army poster demonstrating how to respect and display the flag.
• A poster published by the Office of War Information showing the 48-star flag with the slogan "Give It Your Best!"
• And an illustration of actress and pinup Betty Grable dressed as a nurse in the "For Victory" calendar series.

An illustration from an 1869 copy of Harper's Weekly, from the center's Graham R. Hodges Print Collection, depicts the raising of the Gettysburg Monument, six years after President Abraham Lincoln delivered his most famous address on the spot.

Though not old, five arresting busts of founders - Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Hamilton - from the New York-based StudioEIS give the exhibit gravitas. The busts were created circa 2012 for the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, Virginia.