[OGD] Darwin / exhibition / at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California (US)

[viateur . boutot]

"Charles Darwin (1809–1882)...  known for his theory of evolution and other 
natural history achievements...
his... work with plants...
the important role they played in formulating his ideas.
"Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure” at The Huntington Library, Art 
Collections, and Botanical Gardens explores... these botanical influences, 
Darwin’s research, his contribution to the understanding of plants, and... 
of life in general.
The exhibition will be on display... to Jan. 5, 2009.

The exhibition originated at the New York Botanical Garden...
curator David Kohn, Darwin expert and Drew University science and society 
professor...

it was Darwin’s work on plants that laid the foundation for the great work...
Next year marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th 
anniversary of the book  [On the Origin of Species].

The exhibition features more than 60 items, including
rare books,
manuscripts, and
prints
from the New York Botanical Garden’s collection and
loans from private individuals and institutions such as the Cambridge 
Herbarium,
Cambridge University Library,
Down House (Darwin’s home),
the archives and library of the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University, and
the Lindley Library of the Royal Horticultural Society.
Some items from Cambridge are too fragile to travel, but facsimiles will
...
The Huntington will display its own copies of a selection of items...
including
The Botanic Garden (1791) by Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin
Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665), which features drawings of the first 
microscopic views of plant cells and
James Bateman’s The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatamala (1837–43), a 
large-format book containing 40 color plates of orchids.

Darwin’s work with plants provided... evidence in support of his theory of 
evolution through natural selection.
He laid the foundation of modern botany as an evolutionary discipline.
Darwin also became an expert on virtually every British species of orchid.
He discovered and demonstrated that the key to orchid pollination was the 
touch of an insect’s proboscis, which releases spring-loaded pollen.
From this breakthrough Darwin structured...
argument for adaptation by natural selection.
He contended that plants... are sensitive creatures in possession of 
behaviors that permit them to respond to their environment, including 
elements such as sunlight, touch, and gravity.
Plants climb over neighbors,
track the movement of the sun,
capture and digest insects, and
respond to the “touch from a child’s hair.”
...
The exhibition is divided into three parts:
Darwin’s formative years in education
development of Origin of Species [ [On the Origin of Species], based on 
botanical work and
evolutionary botany.

As an undergraduate, Darwin collected specimens for his botany professor’s 
herbarium.
While still a young man, he traveled aboard the HMS Beagle...
He spent much of his time collecting plants along with fossil bones and 
bird skins.
Darwin’s collection of “all plants in flower” from the Galápagos Islands, 
for example, became the basis for the first flora of that archipelago and 
provided his... evidence for evolution.

“Even before he had gone on that trip, he began to crossbreed plants,” says 
Zeidberg [David Zeidberg, the Avery Director of the Huntington Library].
“This early study of variation would become another principle of Origin of 
Species and one of the underlying concepts of the notion of survival of the 
fittest.”

The exhibition also chronicles Darwin’s professional friendships and 
intellectual exchanges with leading botanists of the era, including
Joseph Dalton Hooker, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and
Asa Gray, ... Harvard University botanist, and
shows how they contributed to Origin of Species [On the Origin of Species].

The exhibition begins just weeks before the... opening of The Huntington’s 
new Dibner Hall on the History of Science. The permanent installation, 
titled “Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World,”... will showcase 
galleries devoted to four subject areas:
astronomy,
natural history,
medicine, and
light.
The section devoted to natural history will include a... display of more 
than 300 editions and translations of Origins of Species [On the Origin of 
Species], including one of The Huntington’s four copies of the first 
edition of that... work.

A catalog of the exhibition,
Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure,
by... curator David Kohn,
will be available for purchase in the Huntington Bookstore"

URL : http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=26405

photo : [caption : "... Angraecum sesquipedale... from Robert Warner’s 
Select Orchidaceous Plants (1865-67).
Darwin predicted that there must be an insect with a proboscis adapted to 
reach the flower’s nectar at the base of the long spur of this... orchid 
from Madagascar. Nearly 40 years later, he was proven correct."]

http://www.artdaily.com/imagenes/2008/10/04/darwin2.jpg

**************
Regards,

VB


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