Located in front of the American Museum of Natural History, the Theodore Roosevelt Monument is an equestrian statue made of bronze by the sculptor James Earle Fraser. The statue depicts Roosevelt on horseback flanked by an African American and Native American on either side. Roosevelt’s equestrian monument was intended to be seen in the context depicting the themes Music and Harvest, and Aspiration and Literature. In a conversation with Mabel O. Wilson, a cultural historian at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Shadman learned that interpretations of the Roosevelt monument are complicated. People who currently look at the statue often see a legacy of colonialism and a visually explicit racial hierarchy.
