Esther Pasztory received her PhD from Columbia University and has been teaching at Columbia ever since. She was a Visiting Professor at UCLA in Los Angeles. Her publications include the first book written on Aztec art and the first major study of the art of Teotihuacan art. She teaches the art of both Mesoamerica and the Andes and focuses on the work of art as a source of evidence for the reconstruction of ancient cultures related to but separate from archaeological and textual data. She is engaged in a theoretical study of the relationship of art and society.