“On The Origin Of Art” is an exhibition that has been in the works since even before the Museum of Old and New Art (mona) opened five years ago in Tasmania, Australia’s southern island. The exhibition centers around two veritably gargantuan questions: Why do we make art? And, for that matter, what is art? “mona is advocating for a bio-cultural view,” says Nicole Durling, mona’s co-director of exhibitions and collections. “Many people tend to focus solely on the cultural aspect of art,” she explains. “While this is important and should not be discounted, we are digging deeper, past culture, to what art’s evolutionary origins may be.” The deep-pocketed institution has enlisted a somewhat unorthodox team of curators: cognitive scientist and linguist Steven Pinker, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, theoretical neurobiologist Mark Changizi, and Vladimir Nabokov specialist Brian Boyd. They have gathered art from the Italian Renaissance, bronze work from Benin, Maori “taonga” (treasures), French Impressionist paintings, Japanese ukiyo-e, and prizes from the Ottoman empire, among much, much, more, all on view through April 17, 2017.
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