Ice Age Art at British Museum: Prehistoric Treasures Dialogue with Modern Masters

The British Museum in London has opened 'Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind' in Gallery 35, a landmark exhibition juxtaposing artifacts from 40,000 to 10,000 years ago with works by modern artists including Picasso, Matisse, Henry Moore, and Mondrian. Curated by Jill Cook, the show has received exceptional praise from the British press, with The Times calling it 'the exhibition everyone should see.' Among the highlights is the Venus of Vestonice, a rare Paleolithic ceramic figurine discovered in 1925 at Dolní Věstonice in Moldavia, on loan to the British Museum for the first time since 2008 when it traveled to the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Another extraordinary piece is the Lion-man, a nearly 40,000-year-old ivory sculpture carved from mammoth tusk, found in 1939 in the Hohlenstein Stadel cave in Germany. The exhibition explores a continuous thread linking early human creative expressions—blending magic, sacred ritual, and communication—with the avant-garde breakthroughs of the twentieth century. It runs until May 26, 2013.