Reading Now: Artist Vincent Valdez Made a Painting So Provocative This Texas Museum Waited a Year to Unveil It. Now It’s a National Sensation.

“My work often relates to past events in American history that have been marginalized or silenced or entirely erased,” Valdez told artnet News. “With a large image in black and white, it’s very cinematic. Some viewers may glance at this and assume this is a haunting image of the Klan in 1939 in the American South, but when you look very closely, I lure you in with those details. It’s really critical that I blur that line between past and present.”