Brendan Murphy's 23-Foot Boonji Spaceman Lands in Washington for America's 250th
There is a 23-foot astronaut standing a few blocks from the National Mall, and it is not quiet. Chrome from head to boot. Catching the sky, the tour buses, the tourists mid-selfie, and throwing all of it back at Constitution Avenue.
Brendan Murphy built it. He calls it Serve the Flag, and it is his Boonji Spaceman, the character he has been sculpting for a decade, scaled up to the size of a building's third floor and planted outside the Art Museum of the Americas for the country's 250th birthday.
The sculpture: A steel skeleton does the heavy lifting inside a carbon fiber body, then eight coats of chrome go on top until the whole thing stops looking like sculpture and starts looking like a mirror that happens to be shaped like a man. Stand in front of it and you don't just see the spaceman. You see yourself, and everyone behind you, folded into the surface.
Washington didn't get the spaceman by accident. This is the Semiquincentennial, America's 250th, and Serve the Flag is the outdoor anchor of "Passport to Patriotism: 250 Years of Diplomacy," a U.S. State Department exhibition pulling in more than thirty contemporary artists, Barbara Ernst Prey, Scott LoBaido, Kevin Champeny, and Romero Britto among them, to answer one question: what does this country actually look like at 250. Murphy answers it twice. Once outside, in chrome, big enough that nobody walks past without stopping. Once inside the museum, in oil.
The painting inside
Freedom 250 hangs in the Art Museum of America for the length of the show, two oil panels, each one six feet by eight. It's the other half of Murphy's visual language, equations and chalkboard scribbles layered over figures and color, the same signature that shows up in his gallery work, aimed here at a single occasion instead of an open theme.
The trader who builds spacemen
Before any of this, Murphy played basketball in Europe. Then he traded on Wall Street in New York. Then September 11 happened, and he was there for it, and it changed what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He walked away from finance, studied under painters Eric Fischl, David Salle, and Ross Bleckner, and built a practice out of equations, chrome, and a spaceman named Boonji who has now, fifteen years later, gotten big enough to stand outside a national museum.
Boonji has made headlines before this. In 2021, a Dutch auction for 7,444 digital Boonji Spacemen sold out in under three hours. $15.5 million. The character in Washington today is the same one, just built physical this time.
Will Boonji stay?
Murphy has said, publicly, that he'd like the Washington spaceman to stick around permanently. That's a hope, not a promise. Right now, it's part of a show that closes October 18, so anyone who wants to see it standing on Constitution Avenue has a window, not a guarantee.
Closer to home
Nobody's buying the Washington sculpture, it belongs to a federal exhibition, not a gallery. But the same character, the same chrome, the same equations, are sitting at Carousel Fine Art right now. Bonji Spaceman (2023) is on the floor at Carousel's Atlanta gallery. Unicorn Spaceman (2025) just arrived, a tabletop-scale version of the same figure now towering over the National Mall.
FAQ
What is Brendan Murphy's sculpture in Washington, D.C.? Serve the Flag, a 23-foot chrome Boonji Spaceman standing outside the Art Museum of the Americas, part of "Passport to Patriotism: 250 Years of Diplomacy," a State Department exhibition for America's 250th.
How long is the exhibit running? Through October 18, 2026, at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C. It's free to visit.
What is Freedom 250? Murphy's two-panel oil painting, made for the same show and hanging inside the museum for its full run.
Can I buy the Washington sculpture? No, it's on loan to a federal exhibition. What you can buy is his other work, the same Boonji character and chrome finish, available now through Carousel Fine Art.
Is the sculpture staying in Washington for good? Not confirmed. Murphy hopes so, but the exhibition it's part of has a set end date of October 18, 2026.
