Even just five years ago, it was unthinkable to imagine a sizable Cady Noland exhibition ever opening during her lifetime in the US, the country whose damaged national identity she has so incisively explored since the late 1980s. Her ramshackle installations composed of American flags, tossed-out Budweiser cans, and car parts have earned plenty of admirers and institutional cachet, but that appears to have mattered none to Noland, who at the time seemed to have essentially stopped showing new work sometime around 2000. Not long before the pandemic, she seemed to have gone silent altogether—no one knew for sure whether she still producing art, or if she had plans to exhibit any of it, if it did exist. There was even a rumor that she declined the opportunity to have a Museum of Modern Art retrospective. Related Articles But now, after having a retrospective in Germany in 2018, Noland has done the most surprising thing yet: she’s begun saying yes to powerful people who come knocking at her door, offering to exhibit her art. Last …