Annette Gordon-Reed and Titus Kaphar — Are We Actually Citizens Here?

On Being with Krista Tippett

On Being Studios

Sociology, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Krista Tippett, Arts, Culture, On Being, Society, Society & Culture, Science, Social Sciences

4.7 • 10.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We must shine a light on the past to live more abundantly now. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed and painter Titus Kaphar lead us in an exploration of that as a public adventure in this conversation at the Citizen University annual conference. Gordon-Reed is the historian who introduced the world to Sally Hemings and the children she had with President Thomas Jefferson, and so realigned a primary chapter of the American story with the deeper, more complicated truth. Kaphar collapses historical timelines on canvas and created iconic images after the protests in Ferguson. Both are reckoning with history in order to repair the present. Titus Kaphar is an artist whose work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions from the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Seattle Art Museum to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His 2014 painting of Ferguson protesters was commissioned by “TIME” magazine. He has received numerous awards including the Artist as Activist Fellowship from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the 2018 Rappaport Prize. Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Her books include “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, and “‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.” This interview originally aired in June 2017. Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for on-being with Christa Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute, helping build the
0:04.4	spiritual foundation for a loving world. Fetzer envisions a world that embraces love as a guiding
0:10.3	principle and animating force for our lives. A powerful love that helps us live in sacred
0:15.2	relationship with ourselves, others, and the natural world. Learn more by visiting Fetzer.org.
0:23.3	In life, in families, we shine a light on the past to live more abundantly now.
0:29.8	Today's show is a conversational exploration of that as a public adventure.
0:34.8	A net Gordon Reed is the historian who introduced the world to Sally Hemings and the children she
0:40.4	had with Thomas Jefferson. And so realigned, a primary chapter of the American story
0:46.6	with the deeper, more complicated truth. He was a multifaceted, as we all are. Yeah,
0:52.7	incredibly complicated, but somebody who existed at the forefront of his society,
0:58.4	studying him is a study of America in many, many ways because so many of the paradoxes,
1:03.9	so many of the dilemmas that exist in his life are in the country. Painter Titus Gaffar created
1:09.8	iconic images after Ferguson. He collapses timelines on canvas. It became very clear to me that if I
1:16.4	wanted to know that history, I was going to have to seek it out on my own. I had to sort of manipulate
1:20.4	what I had and work with what I had to create a narrative that I didn't see or hear.
1:25.5	Is that when you started painting? When you... I think people would say that's when the work
1:29.6	got political. Yeah. I say that's when work got personal.
1:34.6	I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being at the 2017 Citizen University National Conference in Seattle.
1:43.7	I love the title for this gathering. Reckoning and repair. And right now, there are questions that we
1:54.3	are all asking. There's, you know, how did we get here? What just happened? And most importantly,
2:01.1	how shall we live? How do we live forward? How do we live forward together? This is Reckoning. We've
2:06.6	put off and put off and put off. And in this room of civic reflection and social courage,
	...

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