"The Culture of Monkeys" is dedicated to the long-standing cultural and scientific engagement of humans with their closest relatives. In the history of modern Western thought, representations of monkeys have traditionally symbolized the absence of culture. As a boundary figure between human and animal, the monkey has played a central role in the narrative of civilizational progress since antiquity. However, the publication accompanying the exhibition aims to look beyond monkey representations merely as signs of difference. Artistic works, documents from popular culture, and the history of primatology provide insight into what the science historian Donna Haraway calls "primate order": a hall of mirrors of scientific and cultural projections, in which the monkey transforms from an instrument of human self-definition to a test case.