[citation needed][year needed] She has taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Sarah Lawrence College, the National Arts School in Papua New Guinea, and the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka.
That is to say, art evolved to make certain events, tentatively important for survival or social cohesion, more salient, pleasurable, and memorable.
In general, the process of "making things special" is described as drawing on those aspects of the world that evolution had led us to find attractive: visual signs of health, youth and vitality, as well as a balance between uniformity and asymmetries.
This criticism is developed further in the books' last chapter that advocates the necessity to promote art in education and everyday life, as it is said to be a universal, biologically rooted human behavior.
The book has been favorably reviewed by Denis Dutton in 1994 who states that it "calls for a counter-revolution in our thinking about art.