British Museum Lectures: Ice Age Art Now

Join us as we pair once more with the British Museum to bring to life an evening that celebrates humankind's connection and drive towards artmaking. Curator Jill Cook takes us through Ice Age Art Now - a beautifully illustrated book that demonstrates how artistic creativity existed thousands of years before traditional art histories suggest, as an essential part of human life.

Ice Age Art Now presents work by people living in Europe at the end of the last Ice Age. These astounding pieces, some as much as 32,000 years old, reveal the deep roots of drawing, sculpture, realism, abstraction, signs, symbols and more. Six thematic sections delve into specific artworks to highlighting the skill and vision of artists through objects such as a spear thrower made around 11,000 years ago, which was ingeniously sculpted in the round from reindeer antler in the form of a clearly identifiable mammoth. The extraordinary skill and imagination of these early image makers find echoes in modern and contemporary art, with works by Goya, Rembrandt, Henri Matisse, David Hockney and Maggi Hambling also illustrated. A final section explores what life might have been like for the people making art at the time, immersing the reader in the cave itself.

Jill Cook is the Keeper of the Britain, Europe and Prehistory Department at the British Museum. She curated the exhibition Ice Age Art: the arrival of the modern mind in 2013 and is the curator of the exhibition Ice Age Art Now at Cliffe Castle, Keighley, part of the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture celebrations.

Mammoth spear thrower © 2025 The Trustees of the British Museum