“Art history teaches us so much about the present.  We live in a very visual world — computer screens, TV ads, billboards — and all of them are trying to get us thinking a certain way or sell us something.  Art history teaches us how to decode these things and see them for what they are.  Art history also teaches us that civilizations from even way back when are not all that different from us today.  We all share the same human concerns and a desire to express them through art.”