@staticmethod
def readFile(path, out_type=None):
    """Reads the contents of an artifact file.

        Args:
            path: Path to the artifact
            out_type: The data type
        Returns:
            The contents of the artifact encoded as specified by the
            output type.  So for an Array, this will return a Numpy array,
            for an Image, an IPython Image, etc.
        """
    if out_type is None:
        with open(path, 'rb') as fp:
            res = fp.read()
        return res
    return out_type.read_from_file(path)
