Kaphar illustrates the sculpture by saying, “Teddy Roosevelt is sitting there with one hand on the horse, bold, strong, sleeves rolled up. I don’t know if he’s bare-chested, but it kind of feels like it. And on the left-hand side of him is a Native American walking. And on the right-hand side of him is an African-American walking.”(00:10) We look at the sculpture and because we have learned our own history on slavery, we do not question it. Here somebody from a new generation who does not understand out past sees it, and immediately wonders why they are walking. This simple example shows us how art can make us question our history. It allows us to reflect on and realize our mistakes, that way we can learn form them and see much more than people normally do in the art.

Art portrays much more than people see at just a glance. Art can have many hidden meanings that the artist does on purpose. Kaphar is talking about an image that was in one of his books from college. He mentions how the artist put all of these little details into it in order for us to know more about the painting. In his words, “There is a reason why the painter is showing us this gold necklace here. He’s trying to tell us something about the economic status of these people in these paintings. Painting is a visual language where everything in the painting is meaningful, is important. It’s coded. But sometimes, because of the compositional structure, because of compositional hierarchy, it’s hard to see other things.” The the necklace on the women, and how the man is so much taller than everyone else are little details can lead to so much more conversation on our history and where we were as a country that way we can reflect on where we are presently.

I added in the first quote to try to create the scene in my paper as he did in his TED talk, to make it more powerful, and rearranged the second quote to put the description in before the quote. This allows me to give a better lead into the quote as well as making the paragraph flow better.