CHAPEL HILL, NC.- The Ackland Art Museum presents Window to the Humanities - The Roots and Flowering of Civilization - Human Societies and Their Cultivated Plants, through May 15,2005. This exhibition was co-curated with Professor Todd Vision of UNC-Chapel Hill's Biology department, and the students in his first year seminar. With the works of art on display in this gallery, they explore the course's overall theme: human societies' evolving relationship with - and dependency on - plants and agriculture. After reviewing a selection of paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs from the Ackland's collection, the students chose fifteen works, which they then grouped into four categories. Two of those categories focus on specific plants important to humans throughout history in diverse parts of the world: tobacco and cotton. The two other categories examine the role plants have played in human thought and culture: the symbolic meanings of plants and agriculture; and the use of plants in rituals. The exhibition project includes thematic labels written by the students as part of a class research and writing assignment, installed in the gallery midway through the exhibition. Interested museum visitors may review the course syllabus in the gallery notebook.