lecture: Art & Vision Science
May 18 @ 3:00pm – 4:15pm
What is beauty and why does it move us?
Join us as we explore one of philosophy’s oldest puzzles with Dr. Bevil Conway, drawing on the latest findings in neuroscience and evolutionary biology to challenge popular reductive views of beauty as a fitness signal. Together, we’ll consider beauty as a cognitive achievement, made possible by the dramatically larger brain and cognitive potential of humans compared to other primates. Beauty, it suggests, is not a luxury or a distraction—it is the emotion the human mind feels when it is working at its very best.
The annual public lecture in collaboration with The Dalí Museum and the the Vision Sciences Society, represents the mission and commitment of the Vision Sciences Society to promote progress in understanding vision and its relation to cognition, action and the brain.
Location: The Dalí Museum’s Will Raymund Theater (registration required).
This event is free with limited capacity. An event ticket is required for entry.
Gallery access is not included.
Dr. Hank Hine serves as Executive Director of The Dalí Museum and has led the institution since 2002, guiding the development of its current building and expanded campus. Under his leadership, the Museum has strengthened its international reputation while deepening its role as a center for creative exploration. He holds an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and master’s and doctoral degrees from Brown University. Prior to joining The Dalí, Hine served as director of GraphicStudio at the University of South Florida and founded Hine Editions/Limestone Press, a San Francisco publishing house specializing in artist books and museum catalogs. A writer and educator, Hine’s work centers on contemporary art and the evolving relationships between text, image and media.
Dr. Bevil Conway is a neuroscientist and visual artist whose work often uses color as a playground to understand how mind and brain work. He has held positions at Wellesley College, MIT and Harvard, where he was elected a Junior Fellow. His lab studies how the brain interprets information at the center of gaze, how learning transforms vision into concepts, and how these processes compare across cultures and species. He is a frequent commentator in outlets including the New York Times, NPR and WIRED, and gained his 15 minutes of fame for explaining the viral phenomenon #TheDress. His artwork explores the limits of visualization, the nature of representation and ideas of process and beauty, working across media from glass-and-silk to etching and watercolor. His work is in the Boston Public Library and the Fogg Art Museum Rental Collection. He is the author of two forthcoming books: Color Coded (W. W. Norton, 2027) and The Creative Brain, co-authored with Alexander Rehding (Princeton University Press, 2027).
The Vision Sciences Society is a nonprofit membership organization of scientists who are interested in the functional aspects of vision. VSS was founded in 2001 with the main purpose of holding an annual meeting that brings together scientists from the broad range of disciplines that contribute to vision science, including visual psychophysics, neuroscience, computational vision and cognitive psychology. The scientific content of the meetings reflects the breadth of topics in modern vision science, from visual coding to perception, recognition to the visual control of action, as well as the recent development of new methodologies in cognitive psychology, computer vision, modeling, neurophysiology and neuroimaging. Learn more here.
