Can art amend history? | Titus Kaphar

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2017

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Artist Titus Kaphar makes paintings and sculptures that wrestle with the struggles of the past while speaking to the diversity and advances of the present. In an unforgettable live workshop, Kaphar takes a brush full of white paint to a replica of a 17th-century Frans Hals painting, obscuring parts of the composition and bringing its hidden story into view. There's a narrative coded in art like this, Kaphar says. What happens when we shift our focus and confront unspoken truths?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features artist Titus Kephar, recorded live at TED-2017.
0:08.0	I love museums.
0:12.0	Have you guys ever been to the Natural History Museum?
0:14.0	In New York City?
0:16.0	So, one of the things that I do is I take my kids to the museum.
0:21.6	Recently took them to Natural History Museum,
0:25.6	have my two sons with me, Savian and Davin.
0:28.6	And we go into the front entrance of the museum,
0:31.6	and there's that amazing sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt out there.
0:34.6	You guys know which one I'm talking about.
0:39.1	Teddy Roosevelt is sitting there with one hand on the horse, bold, strong,
0:42.3	sleeves rolled up. I don't know if he's bare-chested, but it kind of feels like it.
0:47.3	And on the left-hand side of him
0:48.9	is a Native American walker.
0:52.2	And on the right-hand side of him
0:54.0	is an African-American walker. And on the right hand side of him is an African American walking.
0:57.0	And as we're moving up the stairs, getting closer to the sculpture, my oldest son, who's nine,
1:05.5	says, Dad, how come he gets to ride and they have to walk?
1:11.6	It stopped me in my tracks.
1:15.6	It stopped me in my tracks.
1:17.6	There was so much history that we would have to go through to try to explain that,
1:21.6	and that's something I tried to do with them anyways.
	...

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