Yale Faculty Virtual Roundtable:
The Art and science of Beauty
november 12, 2020
6:30-8:30 PM
(8-8:30 optional Q&A after discussion)
Join us for our next virtual Yale Faculty Roundtable that discusses the Art and Science of Beauty with speakers Richard Prum and Makoto Fujimura. The event will be held over Zoom with an opportunity for at-home dining.
Prof. Richard Prum is the author of The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017), which was named a New York Times' Top Ten Book of the Year and a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Non-Fiction. From 2004 to the present, he has been the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, Curator of Ornithology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. From 2012-2017, he served as Director of the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities that seeks to foster communication, mutual understanding, collaborative research and teaching among diverse scientific and humanistic disciplines. He has received several awards in recognition of his work, including a Fulbright Scholar Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.
Makoto Fujimura is an internationally renowned artist, award-winning author, public speaker, and arts advocate. His art has featured widely in galleries, museums, and notable collections in Japan, Hong Kong Israel, and the United States. He practices Nihonga, Japanese style painting, refractive “slow art” that David Brooks of the New York Times describes as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time.” He is the founder of the International Arts Movement, now IAMCultureCare, and the Fujimura Institute. In 2020, he co-founded Kintsugi Academy. From 2003-2009, he served as an international advocate for the arts in his role as Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts. His award-winning books include Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life (2017) and Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering (2016), a reflection on the nature of art, pain, and his Japanese heritage, inspired by Shusako Endo's book Silence. Fujimura is the recipient of four honorary doctorate degrees. His forthcoming book, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making (Yale University Press) will be released on January 5, 2021.
Suggested Pre-event Readings & videos
Richard Prum
TEDx talk (18 mins) "The Evolution of Beauty" (a quick overview of the subject)
A longer, more substantive talk on “The Evolution of Beauty” at the Chicago Humanities Festival (55 Minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oszg0NAG4WQ&t=2986sA NYTimes article on The Evolution of Beauty (quick overview):
In The Evolution of Beauty:
Chapter 1: Darwin's Really Dangerous Idea (37 pages)
Chapter 12: The Aesthetic View of Life (20 pages)
Makoto Fujimura
Nihonga: Fujimura’s painting process:
"Art Can Teach us How to Live"
Chapter 3 in Art and Faith: A Theology of Making - “Beauty, Mercy, and the New Creation”
Makoto Fujimura’s Work Gallery:
Waterfall Gallery page, with a selection of his works: https://www.waterfall-gallery.com/makoto-fujimura
Further Readings
If you prefer to read a more rigorous (less delightful) perspective on the content of the two chapters from The Evolution of Beauty:
Prum, R. O. 2012. Aesthetic Evolution by Mate Choice: Darwin’s Really Dangerous Idea. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B 367: 2253–2265.
Prum, R. O. 2013. Coevolutionary aesthetics in human and biotic artworlds. Biology and Philosophy 28: 811-832.
For more background to Mako’s work on beauty and culture care, see the following:
Kintsugi: Pieces in Harmony:
Podcast: “Light Through the Cracks – Episode 3”
If you are interested in learning more about this event or would like to be added to our email list for future Faculty Roundtable events, please email Soozie Schneider at soozie.schneider@yale.edu.
Images downloaded from www.unsplash.com. Public Domain.
The Faculty Roundtable is sponsored by the Rivendell Institute at Yale University.
