The argument that art is just another object in one' s regular experience. It demystifies the object, which can help you see it more directly. But it can also make you wonder why you're bothering to look at it at all. When you were thinking about pursuing grad studies in art history, you couldn't find what you were looking for. Art history graduate programs used to be centered on helping students actively engage art objects and understand them, and to cultivate a level of fluency in approaching and understanding art objects.
Art history is more focused now on theorizing.
Many students, especially at Harvard, spend years studying art history without really being forced into an encounter with art objects. I'm afraid of the effects this is going to have on museums. Harvard, particularly, is a place that trained decades and decades of wonderful museum directors. It's one of the worst. But any program that used to have connoisseurship as a hallmark of its curriculum is either fully gone or considerably on the wane.