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Neuroscientists, philosophers, art historians, and artists, will begin to specifically establish the relationship between the visual arts and the neurosciences at a conference sponsored by The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. The first premier gathering of its kind, the Columbia Forum on Art and the New Biology of Mind will be held in the Italian Academy's Teatro on Friday, March 24. The event runs from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
"Recent brain research has begun to significantly augment our understanding of art," says the Italian Academy's Director and art historian David Freedberg. "This is an amazing moment where for the first time we will clearly be able to see how science can illuminate our understanding of and responses to art, and therefore the ways in which students of the humanities, musicians, composers and writers, can inform neurosciences of the vagaries of human behavior." Neuroscientists have made remarkable discoveries about vision, recognition of faces, places and bodies, emotional responses, memory, and a variety of sensual responses to the world around us, including to works of art.
The forum is co-sponsored by Columbia's Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, and by the Louise T. Blouin Foundation. The foundation works to generate and disseminate new knowledge about creativity in which the human brain gives birth to new ideas and directions for our social, cultural and commercial development.
Attending the conference are some of the world's leading experts in neuroscience:
Antonio Damasio, Vittorio Gallese, Raymond Dolan, Margaret Livingstone, Joseph LeDoux, V.S. Ramachandran, and Semir Zeki. The forum will be led by the Italian Academy's Director, David Freedberg, along with Columbia Nobel Laureates Eric Kandel and Richard Axel. A panel of distinguished artists, including Richard Meier, David Salle, April Gornick, George Condo, Joan Snyder, Laurie Anderson, Robert Irwin, Marina Abramovic, Terry Winters, Neil Jenney, Philip Taaffe, and Lynn Davis, will be moderated by Arthur Danto.
Participants in the Academy's forum have done important, original work on subjects ranging from the emotional brain to mirror neurons, empathetic responses, and the study of vision, luminance, and color, synesthesia, and scanning techniques. The forum promises to be a landmark event in which an assessment will be made, in the most rigorous way possible, of the prospect for a newly-enriched understanding of our complex relations to visual art.
Reservations are required and can be made by contacting Rick Whitaker at rw2115@columbia.edu.
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