Gardner's Art Through the Ages

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The fundamental belief that guided Helen Gardner and her successors is that the history of art is essential to a liberal education. The study of art history, like its fellow humanistic studies, the history of literature and the history of music, has as its aim the opening of student perception and understanding to works of high esthetic quality and expressive significance -- works that humankind has produced throughtout history and around the world, and that -- especially now -- are cherished and conserved by the peoples of the world as representative of their cultural identities. The awareness, comprehension, and informed experience of these works are what a survey like this would encourage and hope to achieve. The art experience can only be informed, expanded, and made selective in its judgments if it is at the same time a historical experience. This means understanding works of art within the contexts of their times and places of origin and the temporal sequences of their production.