For Arts of Peace, Fraser made a pair of statues of Pegasus depicting the themes Music and Harvest, and Aspiration and Literature.

[6] The statue was placed at the entrance to the museum's hall of dioramas dedicated to Carl Akeley who had accompanied Roosevelt on a year-long expedition to Africa.

[7] The two walking figures have been construed as representations of continents, not individuals in a narrative, and that was common practice in public sculpture, of which London's Albert Memorial is a prominent example.

One analysis of the work, after examining the careers of both Roosevelt and Fraser, concludes that "Both men evidently believed in white dominance as natural order.

However, Roosevelt and Fraser also had sincere, if paternalistic, admiration for indigenous cultures and a desire to preserve images and artifacts in what was, for the time, a relatively respectful manner.

Roosevelt's relationship with Booker T. Washington and his appointment of Minnie Cox as the first black regional postmaster in the United States (Indianola, Mississippi) is seen as further cementing this view.

In 1999 James Loewen argued in Lies Across America that the statue was erected when the museum was openly racist, and that the arrangement of the figures is meant to advocate white supremacy.

[14] The New York Times critic Holland Cotter found that decision disappointing: "It doesn't require a sensitivity to subtexts to see that the composition, no matter how you gloss it, is quite literally an emblem of white-man-on-top.

[17] It presented comments by the sculptor and his collaborators alongside those of academics who contested what the two walking figures represent and whether Roosevelt could be described as a "racial unifier".

[18] To provide context for those viewing the sculpture, the museum installed laminated placards at its base that said: "This statue was unveiled to the public in 1940, as part of a larger New York State memorial to former N.Y. governor and U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.

[19] Museum president Ellen V. Futter said the decision did not reflect a judgment about Roosevelt but was driven by the sculpture's "hierarchical composition".

"[2] Mayor de Blasio said: "The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.

"[21][22] On June 21, 2021, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove the statue from in front of the museum and relocate it to an institution devoted to Roosevelt's life and legacy.

Theodore Roosevelt IV said: "It is fitting that the statue is being relocated to a place where its composition can be recontextualized to facilitate difficult, complex and inclusive discussions.