Nina Amstutz

The project uses the unique mating displays of bowerbirds, which are endemic to Australia and New Guinea, as a point of departure to question the humanist commitments of art history as a discipline. Bowerbirds have evolved a set of cultural practices that approach the fine arts: They build structures out of sticks, adorn them with feathers, flowers, shells, and other decorative objects, and perform mating displays of song and dance. In evolutionary biology, these displays are largely explained in terms of their reproductive function, rather than as products of an aesthetically driven form of expression. Due to the reigning models of evolution in the life sciences and the history of art history as a humanist discipline, art historians too have neglected the questions raised by this bird’s creations. The project examines how bowerbird displays have been understood across cultures, disciplines, and time, in order to explore what a multispecies art history might involve once the idea of art as a uniquely human activity is historicized. Through collaborative, interdisciplinary fieldwork in New Guinea that integrates Traditional Ecological Knowledge, the project bridges methodologies in the arts, humanities, and sciences, with the aim of expanding how creative expression is studied and understood across disciplines.