What does the professor imply that art historians should do?

Listen to part of a lecture in an art class.
    Professor:
    I won’t point out any further details about the colors on the Augustus statue, because you can already begin to see that there was cultural importance associated with the colors, symbolism which should help us understand the statues better.
    There are many, many more sculptures that have traces of pigments left on them and we have the technology these days to be able to carry out effective studies of these pigments. There is a lot of work to be done, but it needs to be done fast. Like I said before, these pigments deteriorate rapidly so we really need to do the research before the traces are gone so that we can increase our understanding of ancient polychrome sculptures and the cultures that created them.