On Super Bowl Sunday, Universal Pictures debuted the first full-length trailer for Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s latest extraterrestrial epic. Scattered throughout the trailer are repeated references to cardinals, presented as a kind of harbinger of alien life. If that sounds a little familiar, eagle-eyed art viewer, you’re not alone.
Artist Trevor Paglen took to Instagram last week to note the visual link between his 2024 and 2025 shows at Altman Siegel and Pace—both titled “Cardinals” and exploring the history and present of UFO photography—and the new Spielberg film. “Not even mad it’s just kinda weird—I think he should buy some art 😂😂😂,” Paglen wrote.
Naturally, ARTnews reached out to the artist for a closer look at the uncanny overlap between the two projects.
“I saw that Spielberg trailer and there are all these cardinals showing up in different scenes. I was like, I’m pretty sure I know where this guy is getting that from,” Paglen said in a phone call last week. “I know where that metaphor comes from.”
Paglen said the idea of linking cardinals to UFOs originated in his 2023 video installation Doty, which profiled Richard Doty, an Air Force counterintelligence officer and self-described “Mirage Man” who claimed to have spread UFO lore as part of a public disinformation campaign to distract from Air Force technology programs. According to Doty, the Air Force’s unofficial code name for UFOs is “Cardinals.”
But, Paglen added, that code name was not public knowledge before Doty was exhibited in his 2024 Altman Siegel show. “It’s really hard for me to imagine that they would have gotten that image from anywhere else, because it just isn’t out there except in that body of work,” he said.
If Spielberg or screenwriter David Koepp got the idea from Paglen’s show, they aren’t saying. When ARTnews asked about a possible link between Disclosure Day and Paglen’s “Cardinals,” Amblin Entertainment—the production company founded by Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall—declined to comment.
And as for whether “Cardinals” is truly an Air Force code name, it’s probably worth taking Doty’s claims with a grain of salt. In a press release for the 2024 show, Paglen noted that Doty later repositioned himself as a UFO “whistleblower,” claiming to reveal the “real” UFO programs he had supposedly helped conceal.
