Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 182
Apr-2009, Jayme Johnson
I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Can birds create art? Don’t answer until you’ve seen the bower currently on display in the Spencer exhibition Trees and Other Ramifications. Collected by KU doctoral student Brett W. Benz near a village in Papua New Guinea, this bower is an intricate display court built by the male yellow-breasted bowerbird to attract and woo a female for mating. Using stems of the Yar tree, the male bird carefully crafts the bower and will often decorate it with local fruits, river stones, and brightly colored objects pilfered from nearby villages. The Spencer’s bower includes several stones and a blue/green glass marble. Males spend much of their time perfecting their bowers, rearranging and adding stems and painting their interior walls with a clay and leaf mixture. Since the bowers are used to attract females, male birds routinely try to destroy their rivals’ bowers and must constantly guard against threats to their own. In addition to the bower, the Spencer exhibition features rare video footage of the birds building and tending to their bowers. With thanks to Jayme Johnson for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.
