While walking through numerous U.S. state capitols and Washington, D.C., one pattern became increasingly apparent: Greco-Roman architectural motifs have been consistently deployed from the seventeenth century through contemporary architecture. Whether manifested in churches, courthouses, statehouses, or Smithsonian institutions, classical architecture functions as a visual language through which authority, legitimacy, and prestige are asserted. These forms are employed largely consciously, though at times subliminally, to situate American power within what is often framed as a continuous “Great Western” cultural tradition—as if cultural authority were inherited directly from Athens and Rome.

This simplified narrative has become so deeply embedded in the built environment that it often goes unquestioned, absorbed into the visual texture of our cities. In these images, I juxtapose my growing collection of miniature classical ruins and sculptural fragments with classically inspired centers of power in U.S. cities, including the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia. These “classical remains” persist, repeating themselves like a refrain, exposing the constructed nature of such claims. Miniature columns, arches, and broken sculptures appear against monumental civic architecture, their scale and fragility unsettling the certainty of the forms they echo. Together, they gesture toward the myths we continue to uphold and, in doing so, point to what is missing—other histories, other roots, and other inheritances that remain marginalized or unacknowledged.