When we ‘see’ a landscape, we situate ourselves in it. If we ‘saw’ the art of the past, we would situate ourselves in history. When we are prevented from seeing it, we are being deprived of the history which belongs to us. Who benefits from this deprivation? In the end, the art of the past is being mystified because a privileged minority is strivin

Spending time looking at great works of art is precisely that—a powerful form of time unmoored from the demands of the immediate present, whose interstitial moments we tend to fill by turning to our smartphones to alleviate micro-boredom.