The quote “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” is often cited when a piece of art elicits strong reactions.

That principle, in part, is behind a display of Ku Klux Klan robes passersby can see through a window at the Dexter Horton Building in downtown Seattle.

The robes are globally recognized as symbols of white supremacist ideology and violence.

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They’re part of the American History Traveling Museum: The Unspoken Truths exhibit. The installation shares American history through an Afrocentric social lens. Delbert Richardson, the exhibit’s curator, guides visitors through the history.

When asked about the “uproar” his work was causing online, he said, “If you’re uncomfortable, and you want to grow, stay there. Because [for] Black and brown people, it’s a life of discomfort every single day. If you’re inconvenienced with some uncomfortability, then I’ve done my work.”

Richardson primarily works with K-12 grade students. He told KUOW kids come to his exhibit and take in the information just fine.

“It’s the adults where the work is needed," he said. “Not just white people, Black and brown people also too, because there’s a socialization that’s happened for us based on how we’ve had to navigate. Very seldom is a space created where white people are almost forced to connect to a feeling.”

His work is divided into four sections: Mother Africa, which highlights the numerous contributions by African in STEM fields; American Chattel Slavery, which delves into the brutal treatment and psychological impacts on African Americans of the diaspora; The Jim Crow Era, which examines the racial caste system and the creation and enforcement of legalized segregation; and Still We Rise, which focuses on myriad contributions made by Black inventors in the Americas.