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Its been mentioned that we do have a sense of aesthetic beauty "hard-wired" in our genetic code. This is true but it doesnt apply to (most) anything you could witness in an art gallery. Measured response from babies indicates that they react better to symmetrical smooth-skinned faces. This response serves evolution by shaping mate selection and possibly giving children an innate trust of mother figures. There is also a more important genetic response by adults when they see a baby, the "awww cute" heartswell. This serves the obvious evolutionary purpose of creating an emotional bond and fostering child-rearing behavior. This response is transferrable to species that are genetically similiar to us, but not to those which are genetically distant. Baby chimpanzees are much more likely to get an "aww cute" response than, for example, a baby cockroach.
An emotional response in an art gallery can only be said to be genetically based in the sense that we're able to fool the brain through representation. A photo of someone pretty can very easily stimulate the same response the viewer might feel if he or she were in the presence of that same pretty person (hence the titty board). This also explains Anne Geddes dubious career as an artist. She's not just taking photos of babies, she's manipulating our genetic response.
Not all genetic responses serve an evolutionary purpose, those are just the responses that are easiest to understand scientifically. We may have an ingrained genetic response that makes us fancy sunsets or mountainscapes or whatever. We'll never be able to tell exactly what is a learned appreciation and what we are genetically encoded to appreciate. My guess is that the vast majority of responses to work in a gallery is learned. There are many people who don't care for any of the art in galleries. It's assumed currently that these people have just never learned to appreciate art. It's possible though that these people are missing key genes which trigger the desired response. We'll never really know.
We do know that some people have a great difficulty understanding representation. To an autistic person a sculpture might just appear as a chunk of stone, they might not make the connection to what it portrays.
This is different from the detached view that ArtTelevision and many artist types take when viewing a work of art. A detached view allows a person to view a painting as layers of pigment on a canvas, the technique used, etc. These people are perfectly capable of understanding what is or isn't (in the case of abstraction) being represented.
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