The basic story here is simple enough: they are taking down the Star-Spangled Banner, the giant American flag that hangs in the National Museum of American History, for a three-year conservation ...

Matthew Calbraith Perry plans to visit a far-flung island south of Tokyo where his famed namesake ancestor gave a 31-star U.S. flag to an American immigrant some 170 years ago. The 80-year-old ...

"Flags have a hard life," says Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss, chief conservator of the Star-Spangled Banner Project at the National Museum of American History. "The amount of wind damage that happens ...