This piece is a conceptual portrait of Eric Fanning, the first openly gay Secretary of the Army and the first openly gay head of any service in the US Military. Nominated by President Obama and confirmed in May 2016, Fanning is represented by the Army Service Ribbon, a military award of the US Army established by the Secretary of the Army in 1981. The multi-colored ribbon represents the spectrum of military specialties in which officers and enlisted soldiers may enter upon completion of their initial training. Higgins’ magnified representation of this ribbon clearly points to Fanning’s military service, but is also evocative of the rainbow flag—a symbol of LGBT pride and social movements since the 1970s.

A powerful political painting, this work celebrates the progress of the LGBT movement as personified in the person of Eric Fanning, while also carrying associations of the movement’s history and the work that still remains to be done. That this work is being exhibited in San Francisco, a past and present epicenter of the LGBT movement, adds further context to this work and makes it especially relevant.