Before she was a PhD student searching through art history archives around the world, a young Nisa Ari attended museums with her family and tried to discern the histories behind the artwork and artifacts she saw. “It always had the appeal of detective work,” Ari says. Sometimes, when she’d walk into a new gallery, she’d challenge herself to identify artists from paintings at a distance: “That’s a Cézanne, that’s a Picasso, that’s a Léger.”