During the 1960s, my mother and I often visited the Baltimore Museum of Art. The museum’s crown jewel is the Cone Collection of impressionist art, which featured Edgar Degas’ sculpture, “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen.” As a girl, that piece resonated with me because I too had taken ballet lessons and because I could almost look the youthful subject eye to eye.

Last month after viewing The Culture, the dopest exhibition ever of hip-hop-inspired art and artifacts, I strolled past the “Little Dancer” for old-time’s sake. I could not have been more shocked by what I saw. Standing across from “Little Dancer” is “Meredith,” Simone Leigh’s towering stoneware and steel counterpart to Degas’ sculpture. Adorned in a rafia skirt, Meredith is clearly of African descent.

After all those years of admiring “Little Dancer,” I was finally seeing myself in Meredith. She spoke not only to the Black girl I once was but to the Black woman I have become. Teary-eyed, I realized once again how much representation matters–for children and for adults.