Pablo Picasso's "Guernica," Francisco de Goya's "Fifth of May," Eugene Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People," George Orwell's "Road to Wigan Pier," Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," and D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," are all examples of expressly political art. Historically some art has been not only an object of aesthetic appreciation, but has also embodied and imparted a political message. Understanding the way art can be used to further political aims is an important part of art education. This author contends that it is as important to investigate the political and cultural uses of art as it is to engage in the more traditional inquiries of form and style. She proposes an epistemic merit model of propaganda that can more accurately capture the relevant features of propaganda. The four components of this model--(1) an epistemically defective message; (2) used with the intention to persuade; (3) a socially significant group of people; and (4) on behalf of a political institution, organization, or cause--can be used to identify and analyze political discourse in general and in particular expressly political art. The primary benefit of this model is that it defines propaganda in a way that focuses on epistemic content, thus allowing an evaluation of putative cases of propaganda using traditional philosophical tools of epistemic evaluation. This evaluation emphasizes the semantic content of an artwork and how it is connected to other beliefs and values within the cultural context. (Contains 24 notes.)