Published: 3 February, 2012

IT is a common complaint in abstract art galleries up and down the country: “A monkey could have painted that.”

Well, now they have – apes, orangutans, gorillas and chimps, to be precise – and an elephant called Boon Mee from Thailand.

In a world first, an exhibition featuring paintings by a range of species has opened in University College London’s Grant Museum of Zoology in Bloomsbury.

Visitors are being invited to question whether elephants “can be creative” and if the paintings can be “dismissed as meaningless”.

Since the mid-1950s, zoos have used art and painting as a “leisure activity” for animals. It was first popularised by Granada TV’s Zoo Time, which started in 1956.

Critics have raised concerns over animal cruelty. But museum manager Jack Ashby said: “When the co-curators came to the museum it was one of the first questions we asked. It’s not cruel, though, because the animals are enjoying it. It is fun for them, an artistic enrichment exercise.”

Co-curators Will and Mike Tuck, graduates of the Royal Academy of Art and UCL Slade School of Fine Art, are exhibiting works they have brought from zoos around the world.

• The exhibition, Art by Animals, is on until March 9.