next on american history tv, penn state university history professor talks about how they experience the art and architecture, including the statue of freedom atop capitol dome. he also discusses how christopher columbus, native americans americans, and females -- areicted in the depicted. this is about an hour. >> welcome to the lecture series. i'm the chief of stories here at the society. it is great to see everyone here. namedeaker today is a guy matthew restall. i want to read the title because it is ponderous. edwin earl sparks professor of latin american history and director of latin american studies at penn state. educated at oxford, easier like, .nd published numerous books some of you might recognize his name and some of the things he will be touching on from our last dome, where he has an article on help montezuma keeps surrendering in the art of the capital. and historical indications. various -- and historical variations. this is a chance for us to highlight interdisciplinary andoaching capital is allowing us to hear various stories and because various , itorians like matthew takes a village to tell the story of the capital. , whenpublishing a book montezuma met cortez, the meeting that changed history. it will be out next month. he is currently the fellow at the library of congress and a capital fellow of hours. we are honored to have him as a capital fellow. he is a fine fellow in his own right. rlp me welcome matthew estall. >> thank you, chuck. picking up on what chuck just said, as i am looking around the room, i'm guessing everybody here knows academics, professional scholars, we are supposed to stay in our cages, by which i mean cages defined by disciplines in our field. mine is history of central america. out of supposed to get my cage and wander around the zoo into other cages. i haveere in d.c. means a rare opportunity and privilege to be able to do that and in august, i enjoyed the time i spent in the archives in the capital, which is where this paper comes from. it is a work in progress and i may be saying things that you already know. hoping most of-- what i am saying you've forgotten so that it is new material. i've also want to thank the curator in the capital. i don't see her here, but like chuck, her support and encouragement made all of this possible, as well as the others who work in the curator's office. images to get us through about one every 45 seconds, so i am going to move quickly through them and you have been warned i am not an art historian, so if you are particularly interested in something, take a note of it and i will go back and maybe ask one of the art historians to talk about it and the proper terminology. albert ports was the first one to meet the statute at the top of the capital building in the closing years of the 19th century. clamming up to give the bronze lady of bath, he would repeat the process countless times. the intimacy of the experience but ideas in his head. year after year, he geared to place his own lips on the statue's oversized bronze lips. yet he resisted. they were both married and not to each other. name,e statues ocular he delivered the kiss of which he had dreamed. the guilt consumed him. scrubbing later while uncle sam's wife's face, he fell , breaking an arm and a leg. convinced the cost was her indignation over his liberty. you can see that newspaper report right here, that absolution was finally at hand. illicitollowing ports' kiss, another bronze figure on the exterior suffered a nonconsensual in dignity. evidence is preserved in the records of the capitol police. 1928, a lieutenant reports to a captain that the previous some unknown person has broken the sword off one of the figures for a souvenir from the door." the lieutenant meant the bronze rogersesigned by randall in 1853, the eastern entrance into the rotunda, popularly known as the columbus doors. victim, the famous conqueror of the aztecs, but more likely to brother of the man represented multiple times inside and outside the building, christopher columbus. showed hisant captain he was soliciting information and now had a man preventing anyone from approaching the doors when the building is closed. today of course there is more than one man on guard to ensure no visitor can get close enough to the columbus doors to even see them, let alone steel their swords. what are we to make of these anecdotes? how do they offer us a way to approach a much-study holding? answer by way of william carlos williams. after visiting the capital, he wrote a poem about its art. first published in 1924, it was coral."it is a living the metaphor might be applied to any museum with an expanding collection. the capital is not a museum, nor viewed as such by visitors, and there and lies another side to the metaphor, one that struck me but with which williams was not concerned at all. he could not have known they would develop a field of study mortality,coral understanding why coral reef's suffered catastrophic destruction has resulted human, land use, fishing, and tourism. upon visitinglse a coral reef is to break off a piece of coral to take home, so visitors to the capital attempted to take a piece of it for a souvenir. those souvenirs have in rare cases such as the sword been physical objects. they have been memories of physical interactions with the buildings art objects, such the kiss shared with freedom. that physical component of the capital human experience is what i will outline in the next half hour. more often the takeaway has been ideas, not objects. thousands of visitors leave the capital every week with the digital representations of themselves posing with the selfies thatart, fall into a liminal space between objects and ideas come like a hologram. ons is not the place to draw depth perception theory, the readers and viewers respond to literature, art, cinema, and so on, but there is here,a that is relevant that readers respond to attacks based on their horizon of expectations and the cultural framework they bring to the text. with respect to the capital, visitors come to the building with a sense of proprietorship, the belief they own a share of all that is in it and it tells them something about themselves or reaffirms something they are at it themselves and or nationality. to the identity of his statue at the top of a dome or the meaning of the paintings in the rotunda is determined about such ideas that visitors bring with them. the same applies to the historical events referenced in the art. the ideological reception of the capital's art is the second topic i will outline. my third and final section circles is back to freedom. whose true identity i shall suggest to at the end of my talk , and then to arrive at freedom on time i selected a complex cluster of visual and historical themes, the usage of people and places from elsewhere in the americas, especially columbus, the representation of indigenous peoples in the capital, and the buildings gendered representation of america and its history. topics, butl vast threaded together in the capital in a way i hope to show you, something almost as simple as a stolen kiss or a stolen sword. me, one of the conservators. someone in the room might know who this is. you can see how tempting it is, right? ok, so part one, for a souvenir, a reference to a quote i read a little while ago. complainedn sculptor in a letter to his brother in 1842 that statues of washington and columbus and the capital had received considerable injury in the few years they had been standing. he was referring to his own much reviled sculpture of washington located in the center of a 1-1843 before184 being moved to the capitol grounds. the discovery of america in place in 1844 was building's eastern front. you can see it here in the distance. the space behind it was an ideal spot. shortly before his death in 1852 , he grumbled "i have seen several time boys the plan the portico of the capital, which makes it the wrong place for costly sculptures." he was right to worry about the discovery of america. wrote an observer in 1912, "it is somewhat to the nation's credit that vandalism after long years have mutilated the beauty work." among the various sculptures on the east front of the building, eyelids chipped, hans broken off broken off, and the blade of a short sword was broken. andre exposer to elements visitors, the garments that sways the lens of the indian girl has a multi-can look. from 1871 through to the 21st century when the building was closed, so too were the columbus doors. with the columbus scenes looking into the eastern part of the city accessible to any visitor climbing the steps, the stolen sword was hardly the first casualty of such accessibility. a self identified congressional of 1899 inin january her diary, "policeman arrived just in time to save one of the hiring the figures on the bronze doors of the rotunda from a headhunting savage from indiana." cortez and columbus were both frequently subject to the tugs seekers.enir in the art inside the building is almost as honorable. one sculpture in statuary hall featured a group of indians to him he was preaching. one had his bow stolen, another lost his finger. soldiersa group of grew rowdy. they started stabbing at the artwork with their bayonets. they were thrown out of the building, which was then closed to visitors for the rest of the date with the columbus doors locked, one of the few occasions that the great key was overturned. earlier that decade, the rotunda was the host to the garfield fair with a barrier put up to protect the paintings. it was extraordinary to imagine this was done. it was winter and furnaces were d heat was discharged, causing discoloration, cracking, holes, and other damage. seed.s of the the capital's archives are full of reports reflecting the ways in which human beings have endangered the building and its i imagine if i pursue that topic in the archive of the capitol police themselves that there would be enough material for something book links. it would be interesting to me anyway. sub995 a congressional committee on appreciation' apprs received a proposal to protect the building from visitors. because visitors "wear down the steps and brush against the and generally product, polk, and pull at the artwork, and entrance fee should be charged, suggested the heritage foundation. democrats in the houston announced the idea as indirect taxation typical of republican dishonesty, arguing the public saw itself as the proprietor of the capital. "don't charge american families usage fees to what belongs to declared a representative from ohio. democratic senators chimed in. really believe it is too old-fashioned to think those who own the building will not have to pay in admission fee to to enter it?" lawmakers sentiments were canvassed by a reporter from the hill. i'll give you a small sampling here. mr. and mrs. brock of williamsville, new york called it are privileged, "we are not visitors. we are taxpayers." "this is my house," set a person from new jersey. already,"ough commented one. , the reverendl donald bassett of tennessee found the fee proposal to testable and in violation of "the ferry concept, the very idea of america." the notion of ownership of walking into my house is a thread that runs through two centuries. attached to that idea i have often related sentiments of duty and patriotism. margaret leech wrote in 1860 that visitors lingered on the east portico to admire the colossal statues. it was not clear what they made of them, but they all paused to stare. in 1864, a union army officer wrote to his sister that the capital is a fine affair and the paintings are magnificent. he was particularly taken by images of pocahontas and columbus as historical figures he recognized. later, had long time washington bureau chief for the new york times commented on the visitors he had seen year after year ringing their children to the capital. there they would take their photographs in front of the who the seldom knowing sculpted figure was, but "the meanest of them know that he was part of something and they are part of it too." " they are all part of the same thing, secret sharers, errors of seed."-- bearers of a is it one of patriotism? oneove our capital wrote person in 1874. the women's editor for the sacramento union told californians in 1967 that a visit to the capital "will stir a new patriotism in you. the history of the united states become so much closer and more than words in a book. you can feel the red, white, blue in your veins." the capitals are showing is as a show until history lesson. the official 1955 guide to the capital stated that john trumbull painter of the war of independence cortez the rotunda developed his talented art for the express purpose of leaving to the american people historically correct paintings of the struggle for liberty. visitors were reassured in the guide that the buildings art was factual and historically correct. or the third possibility is negative example. brother in thes 1840's that "the ornamental departments of the capital seem controlled by the demon of bad taste." in 1855 review of the baptism of pocahontas concluded that " chapman makes you regret that he ever painted it." we don't live in a world anymore where people make mild criticisms like that. columbus was "tame, ill arranged, and destitute of atmosphere." in 1912 guide to washington's art treasures lamented how often one encountered the work of, thomas crawford. a 1915 guide to the city described the cultural work in the capital as little short of x -- the masses noticed the sloppily arrangement and ineptitude of those creating the capital. does anyone fancy the uninstructed multitude does not feel these incongruities? it is not so. later observers were not so convinced. alfred friendly for the washington post joined a bus tour of capitol hill in 1966, noting visitors in the capital seldom looked up unless they were directed to do so. without command, overhead beauty missed. 20the end of the century, roll call wondered if visitors were learning much from its art. "the capital's paradox is this, it iseasy to get into but a hard building to understand. reliable information about what the visitor sees, why it is important, is fragmented and difficult for most people to obtain. there are papers about the core doors are lovely, but hardly central to the meaning and importance of the capital." what exactly was the buildings meeting at the turn of the millennium? ick senate historian, dac baker, limited "if you ask a visitor the name of the building , in most cases they will say house."e and english visitor to the capital summarized his impressions to the post. "when it comes to monuments and things like this, ours are a lot bigger."t yours are in 1966, friendly concluded "real purpose of washington's famous monuments suddenly apparent, backdrops for family pictures." anticipating the culture of smartphone selfies, he asked "do tourists really want to see anything or just have been seen at the site?" that is where workers see bearers are most meaningfully found. visitors may have felt patriotic fervor and pondered issues of historical accuracy and experience what mark twain called after visiting the deliriumhe trimmings of art. , thekind of national home building is not expected to be museum perfect or history book accurate. in 1874, thet capitals defects more in dear us to it because above all these are human. hotsaid note matter lonely a citizen was "these core doors, walls, our years, the highest man in the nation owns nothing here which does not equal to the loan to you. the goddess of liberty gazing down from her shield bestows no rights upon the lofty which she does not extend to the lowliest of her sons." section. final the very idea of america. suggests that the horizon of expectations that visitors bring to the capital is at best highly abstract, and at worst so vague and contradictory ando be almost meaningless, yet the building is packed with very specific representations of historical moments and figures. there are some very obvious -- such asstructures short washington, but my interest is in one man who never set foot in what would become the united states, and yet is disproportionately represented. appropriate for this week, columbus. close to 1000n works of art in the capital during its history, including items lost or stolen, destroyed and fires were transferred to other buildings. depending on how one counts an other, for example, columbus stores one object or nine? 40 to pick non-u.s. individuals, that is figures from the early and latin american past, columbus brothers, cortez, cookies to doors, and the dominican friars. that is less than 6%, but almost half of all those comprise or include columbus. sculpted and1827, painted columbiana grew steadily so that by 1912 when the christopher columbus memorial was built in front of union station -- and just to show you i'm not being snobbish about people using monuments for family pictures, that is my oldest and youngest daughter -- you can see him staring towards the capital. by then there were close to 20 representations of columbus in the capital building or outside it. 15, onetally is still in 50 pieces of art in the capital feature columbus. past 1958, visitors walked the massive sculpture of the openingd until of the visitors center through the columbus stores with their nine pictures of the navigator into the rotunda where columbus appears three more times. my columbus? in part because he is not cortez. the 19 to century american understanding of the spanish conquest was influenced by writersnt writers from whose books for children on cortez and others were bestsellers in many languages. you may not have heard of him, but he sold more books than most famous historians and amusing the to us today these are books that are really supposed to be for children and structured as a father reading stories to his children and full of the most extraordinary violence we would never permit in children's books descriptionsrate of aztec sacrifices and so on. columbus was first published in english and 1799. the library of congress has a couple of copies. he called the can keys to doors , ofhis dreadful monsters the explorer was a creating good man, courageous and resolute, opposed to idleness and if and when the city, so a noble manly explorer untarnished by massacres, columbus was not only an acceptable alternative, his fake of national identity allowed into the appropriated as an american, and that is not an original statement by me as you probably already know. literature oftire books how columbus was invented in the 19 century, particularly in the united states, and becomes turned into an american, has in u.s. rogers was expressing the expressing the common opinion when he said columbus was second only to washington as the man "most intimately connected with the , so whoof this country better deserves a lasting monument to his memory? his reinvention is so profound that even the conquistadors are columbus-like. just soto peacefully discovering the mississippi in an echo of columbus's discovery of america, and cortez peacefully accepting the surrender of montezuma, and here is a shameless plug for my book coming out. nowhere in the book, 600 pages long, to i make that connection because that was only by spending time in the capital and looking at the art that i realized there is another way to understand who the spanish conquistadors are, how columbus is americanized and they have all been columbusized. sidebar, fascinating the substitution of columbus for cortez took place in the mid- 20th century and the mexican in the sea here d.c. this is the building that was the embassy and is now the mexican cultural institute. you can see where the mural is on the staircase. on the left, you can see a figure of columbus that allows you to see him where he is more clearly. it should be cortez approaching. you can see other conquistadors behind him, and you can see more clearly figures like the conquistador with the red beard. any mexican those instantly that is pedro alvarado, and infamous conquistador, so it makes no sense columbus should be there. the development of art in the capital, he was substituted. however all that is only part of the extra nation to the columbiana phenomenon in the capital. lies in theit parallel depiction of indigenous peoples who appear in roughly 50 artworks in the building, some 7%. these are mostly from within what became the united states, so historical figures such as sequoia and pocahontas, but latine some from land america like montezuma and generic indians. percentage is misleading because it is skewed by the hundreds of statues of politicians most of whom visitors walked past or are no longer allowed to see. depictions of indigenous people are concentrated on the eastern front of the building or the rotunda, a focal point of tour. one guide noted that the fortunes of american indians constantly recurs throughout the decorations of the capital. each cup sculpture demonstrated "what the coming of the new race was to mean for the old." have always indians been as inescapable as george washington, arguably more so. those representations of indians fall into two main categories, either engaging in acts of violence. a good example are the release and the rotunda, or show indigenous men and women welcoming the invaders. this duality was captured as early as the 1830's, as well as its intended impact on visitors. indianment on early portraits could apply to succeeding representations of all indigenous peoples. they have "but two sorts of expressions. the one is noble and warlike. the other of a gentle and naïve simplicity. it has no mixture of folly but is more touching perhaps." from 1844 to blatantly racist 21st century, fromieces were denounced the very start, yet survived everything from and it nation from visiting tribal chiefs to house resolution calling for their removal or distraction. they finally went into permanent storage in 1958. two ways of had presenting indigenous people having deep roots going back to the era of columbus himself. nobletegories, the savages, innocent and childlike and bloodthirsty barbarians who resisted and given the accusation they were cannibals. next three centuries, those two categories were reinforced by spanish and portuguese law regarding the excitement of indians. peacefullyoiled away could not be enslaved. those who resisted would be branded and sold or slaughtered. in north america the latter category was applied more than the former. as is well known yet has been insufficiently discussed, and 19th-century america, indigenous people were systematically displaced and then eliminated, a history depicted in the sequence of art. indians as warrior were replaced with those who were peaceful and passive later in the century. theoderate americans, sequencing is irrelevant as the categories are experienced all at once. i suspect visitors instinct of the grasp the violent indian is past.re from the distant historical, harmless, possibly even fictional. the passive is closer to the present. indeed, the passive indian is most obviously represented by pocahontas. plays thees, she clear role as the antidote to the violent indian, including her own relatives. forest," in the snatched from the idolatry to become a lamb. phrases of a modern heart historian, pocahontas has changed into a highly anglicized diminished in the ancestorsustice are soon would be. seem to the right, only her sister is caught in the light and properly rendered, yet her highly passive pose on the ground, scantily clad, almost topless, ties into the larger depiction of indigenous women in the capital, especially in the rotunda where other women are likewise passive, loosely --.ed, almost these two categories were not intended as a division of men in gendered.soon became over the centuries that followed, the prospect of colonization became gendered as and, with the indians indigenous america gendered as female. this could take a form of how history was narrated, this is an 18th-century engraving of cortez womaning the indigenous who goes down in history as his mistress who was actually a 12-year-old girl and then as and historysweeps telling, a century later, we have similar representation. so, how history was narrated or how the continent was presented allegorically. we're back to this 16th-century image and then the naked woman in a hammock is supposed to be america. i am going to come back to one 17th-century representations of again, this is america. moving forward to the 19th century it and the capital itself. columbus and the indian maiden. which i think is absolutely extraordinary and not often discussed piece of art. the only way it does not wake that my argument is how for some reason the artist decided to astray the indian maiden not really an indian at all. the clothing is all completely wrong. utilization for the clothing as opposed to the feathers, which he should have done but nonetheless there is a beer on his face that -- can only say what he is thinking in that way. this is a highly revealing portrait of the gendered allegories. as befitting its neoclassical style, the statue of freedom is not even the only female category sculptured by the artist. right,look at her on the shown in more detail. but only one fits into a tradition so deeply and specifically routed and how europeans and euro-americans have depicted in imagined america. as female, indigenous, wealthy, and ripe for the taking. this is captured in these images , particularly this frontispiece that was in a book first published in the 16 70's, highly influential and much copied. tos would've been familiar any literate or semi-literate european or euro-american running all the way through early 19 century through which time it appears through multiple variants. the origin of the feathered headdress a freedom is well known, often repeated. at least that is the immediate origin. that immediate origin was jefferson davis's order to crawford to remove the statue of liberty cap, deemed inappropriate for a nation where slavery was still legal. the secretary of war, davis would soon become capital -- president of the confederacy. it was replaced by "a bold arrangement of feathers, suggested by the costume of indian tribes." the deeper origin of the headdress is the role played by feathers as an icon for indians, again going all the way back to the 14 90's. throughout the capital, indigenous people are stereotypically marked i nowhers, which has functioned in the west for centuries. for that reason, i would suggest freedom has struggled her entire life to be recognized by her official name. newspaper reports as quote america's most misunderstood women or one of the most misunderstood or misinterpreted girls in the capital. far more she has been called "armed freedom," or the "statue she would more properly be called indigenous. i came frequently upon miss liberty, miss freedom, the lonely lady and significantly, miss america. the goddess ofer freedom, the goddess of liberty, occasion,thers and on the statue of liberty. crawford imagined the statue sought in all of branch the mass of our people would understand, the people would easily identified her as freedom triumphant. it would prove to be the feather rather in the emblems of four and peace that would be meaningful to the masses. as the washington post explained in 1989 -- a campy address and heavy robes. three decades earlier, the statue "wears a headgear usually described as a feather headdress but a close range it resembles a dead the eagle or coat others wrote, the headdress looks more like a chicken that an eagle. parcel, the and statue's indigenous identity has been a consistent threat. the indian goddess has been one of her names going back to the and in 1939 aury washington post article stated that tourists most commonly to the statue to be pocahontas. the post stated in 1945 that because of those miscellaneous feathers and her headgear, most people speak of "that indian on the dome" and in fact and this is ironic, 1945, ironic in view of the alignment of nations in the recently concluded world war, the post said "she is no ndian, she is italian." the explanation as a footnote we can come back to but i suspect you all know. in 1961, a magazine polled taurus and locals asking them the identity of the female statue. none calls her "freedom." instead, guesses included "dolly amber e-gov sbg, queen aabella of spain, about cortez, miles standish, john paul jones, paul revere, a roman senator, susan b anthony, jennifer, sitting all, hi what that was at number two," guess, most popular pocahontas. asert porte thought of her mrs. uncle sam. ast identified her pocahontas. i suggest since she was placed on the capital. she has been understood in various, sometimes may, sometimes particular ways, as being american and in female indian form. into tiny fresco images hidden on the ceilings in different rooms in the capital, there was connection. this one on the left is on the front cover of the spring 2014 w issued by the way. visitors do not need to get special permission to see america as was called both of these figures. seenan see her, you have enough nelly and if you did not already know the things i've been talking about this morning, you can see her up there with her colored feathered headdress. you do not need special admission to get into h 144 or as 127. at the top of the capital, combined with the artwork inside the building, it reinforces visitor expectations that the building, the whole capital building, is a complex visual expression of history and power racialized in gendered. the discovery was hated and hidden. it made it way too uncomfortably obvious that freedom is really america. thank you. [applause] >> yes? >> very interesting lecture. thank you. could you talk a bit about depiction of other nonwhites in and howtal building that has changed over the years in particular whether there was a big change before and after the civil war. >> you been slavery and depictions of african-americans? i started toot? no, into that and, started a project in august in the archive in direct lies there was an entire whole separate topic there and it has been studied in there were references to articles. i'm not sure if there's a whole book on it but i began this project by inking about writing just about the statue itself of freedom and was surprised to discover there was not a serious or even semi-serious entire quote even about the statue but inre is massive information the archives that would work for that and in the early version there is a chapter on that exact topic because i discovered in the material that if you pay close attention and your tour of the capitol building or read the little plaques around, any thetor would know this that statue of freedom when she was the in bronze right up on kind of borders of the district of columbia baltimore, that the work was done by slaves. when theiming of statue was created, not the original plaster model in rome but the bronze one note was graded here, was such that it was right when the war was when slavery was abolished. so there is a particular individual slave some information is known about and in the archivist i found sort of primary source material relating to his -- not his selling but his emancipation and his owner receiving a sum of money from the government in return for that event cetacean in he was a guy that was in charge of the bronzing of the statue. so that is really ironic, right? because of jefferson davis in, you going to take this liberty cap off of slavery and by the time it was put on top of the dumb, slavery was abolished. there are all kinds of nice ladies there. -- there were all kinds of nice ironies there. if i can give you a fuller answer i can say that was the getting. that was the anecdote to begin that story. the irony and it stretches up to the present day, there is an article i very quickly looked at -- no, i can't get sent down into that rabbit hole to do with african-american responses to the capital building. -- earlynses were not 1990 -- somebody had interviewed people coming out of the building and they are saying "yeah, i guess this is not really about our history." ok. well. but then, you go all the way back to the headdress on the top and the feathers on the cap and that kind of opens up a whole other story that is interesting. also, i imagine, wrongly, that the museum of african american history -- i'm getting the neighbor -- the african-american history of culture museum i had this idea you could somehow walk up the steps to the n somehow see that easy him, a visual sense of how the way that buildings are structured on the mall and the art in them reflect changes in american history and how the united states is kind of dealing with all of this -- kind of looking back and say, yes the -- that american african-american people and indigenous people are represented our 19th century ones but we have not changed that. we appointed in silos in separate buildings which is either great or terrible depending on what you expect. when i stood there i realized it was not quite like that. the building should be right there, hovering on the edge of the capital. does anyone have a question about something i actually know something about? that would be great. [laughter] >> i know, that is a tough one. >> i think i understood the point you are trying to make by the substitution of columbus for cortez in the mexican culture. i'm not sure what the mexican culture was trying to accomplish my doing that. maybe the larger question is, what do latin americans and south americans think when they know,e whitewash, you cortez disappears. umbusization of conquistadors. making them look like good guys rather than you know, cookies to doors. conquerors. conquistadors, conquerors. >> all countries grapple with this notion of national identity , right? --t kind of terror docs paradox. engendering anyone of patriotism. in the course of doing the, you are distorting and rewriting history and teaching your children lies, right? been a particularly interesting and well-studied story along those lines in euros.in the last 200 i think mexicans have been very open and transparent and how they have tackled that. they left a superb trail of art and literature that has allowed historians to pursue it. i am kind of wildly guessing but i imagine if we were to sort of been thousands of nationals from mexico into the old america, can see that now, have them look at that and tell them about that, they would have a lot of things to be able to tell us. they would respond to that about their opinions about columbus and cortez and so on. obviousink it is very controversial a figure and mexicans and said, we don't even have statues of cortez in mexico, and mexico city. you cannot find them. occasionally there are things that are sort of vaguely named after him but there is no big monument. nothing even remotely close to what you would see in washington, d c, for columbus and george washington. nothing like that. so when not be surprising to them. what is interesting to me is the buildingin the capital or on capitol hill generally or maybe in the whole city and perhaps maybe in the whole of the united states, the weight columbus is used at think is not as transparent. not even remotely as transparent. every columbus day, different eggs are set about columbus day, indigenous peoples day, so on, not that samee is level of transparency and instead it becomes kind of a little out of ground like we've seen recently over these -- battleground like we have seen recently over these monuments and things like that. >> you quoted the ways in which people talked about how people have looked at the capital over the centuries. souvenirs, visitors prod, poe, pull the artwork -- do you sense any shift over time in the way those who were in charge of preserving the capital thought about the visitors? restall: i know where you're going with that and i looked for that. catalog.ve is not there is kind of a basic archive. i am interested in the columbus drawers, but none of that is catalog. it is not searchable in any way. so, i wanted, i was curious about that. official curator positions. not official, the official curator positions don't really change. that is obviously sort of very diplomatic. our job is to preserve the artwork from damage and allow people to come in and enjoy it. the unofficial one is what i was interested in and i got kind of little snippets. usually snippets of somebody talking about somebody else like this poor guy did baker i forgot to google. he might be in the room. whether he is still around. him making that quote about visitors, right, is what i think that no people think curator is going to officially say something like, people think they're in the white house, you know, they don't understand the art so it is fine not to let them see it. let me answer the question another sort of slightly indirect way that relates to percival's discovery. i understood from talking to michelle: and from some of the documents i found that they wanted to remove that and the other for a long time but they were not quite sure how to do it. right? the curator or anybody, the architect of the capitol, starts removing art around the building and taking it out, you kind of open up a can of worms, right? you don't do that. so under what were they removed? 1958 is when they begin the renovation. the east portico was rebuilt. everything had to be removed, you know, for the dismantling to and the new columns put up. so they were temporarily removed into storage and the smithsonian and then accidentally on purpose, somebody forgot to put them up there. that gives you insight into various aspects. of havingsort official reasons that was built but unofficially what that meant was that having hordes of people wandering freely through the building where it has always been. steps,k up the front through the rotunda and you just walk around and look at the art but that came to an end because of reasons of security. not because the curator said, it is getting damaged because kids with backpacks and that can stuff. no. so i think attitudes, the official attitude in the unofficial one and it provides opportunities. would you be available if people contacted you and the little time you have left ear and washington, d.c., people contacted you? restall: yes, particularly like -- dude, there's a whole book on that. i would like that very much. >> thank you again. 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