(upbeat intro music)
- [Narrator] Why is it important
to study art of the past?
- [Instructor] Art history
is not just in the past,
it is in the present and
when I teach art history,
I'm teaching about the context
and I'm trying to help students
find those connections
between what happened then
and why and what's happening now and why.
Everything that we have
about where we came from,
our culture, the ideas
that we've had in the past
are all wrapped up in these artifacts
and the arts that we look at.
If we want to know more
about who we are today,
we should really look at past arts.
- [Instructor] I believe that
art is the underlying thread
that informs our everyday life in ways
that we might not even be aware of,
and I think it is the language
that is important for us
to understand how it
works and how we read it.
Visual literacy is just as
important as written literacy
and we're living in a visual world.
- [Teacher] Studying arts
history helps us find
points of connection with people
from other places and other times.
- [Teacher] One of the things
that I think my students
get out of studying
art of the past is that
they can start to empathize
and understand what
it was like to live a life that
is very different from their own.
They understand that their
cultural frame of reference
and their religious frame of reference is
not the norm throughout
all time and space.
I'm a Non-Westerner so I firmly that its
important to study the traditions
of other cultures,
and not just privileged
the legacy of European art
but understand also that other cultures
produce important art and
some of the best artists.
[Teacher] I think we
study the Art of the Past
because we are fascinated about
ourselves and own creative potential.
And also really fascinated about our
own deeper sense of where we come from.
Art is this record that
the past has left us,
that allows us to look back in time
and understand what they cared about.
What they really thought was precious.
What they thought was worth recording
and leaving for the future generations.
We understand ourselves
and who we are as human.
By understanding the art of the past.
(upbeat piano music)
