Why are certain objects important? This question serves as the gateway through which students enter Readings in Art Appreciation, an anthology dedicated to exploring the history and value of the visual arts. The carefully curated readings explore art created over the past 20,000 years in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North and South America. The selections take readers on a chronological tour beginning with the earliest creative pursuits of humankind and ending with modernity and post-modernity. While learning about architectural art in Egypt, the aesthetic sensibility of the Middle Ages, or the oldest sculpture at Tenochtitlan, readers become familiar with the values of a time and place as manifested in objects, and how this impacts and informs our lives today. The revised first edition contains a new chapter written by the author on the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript that contains the first four chapters of the New Testament and was produced by monks in Ireland in the early 8th century. Readings in Art Appreciation is ideal for survey courses in art history, art appreciation, and cultural studies. Andrew Jay Svedlow received his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University and completed a program in management and leadership in education at Harvard University. He has directed and administered programs for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Design and the Museum of the City of New York and was twice selected as a Fulbright Scholar. Currently a professor of art history at Northern Colorado University, his art criticism has appeared in American Artist and New Art Examiner. He has also written numerous research articles and is the author of Thirty Works of Art Every Student Should Know.