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For Immediate Release
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Elaine Wilner (215) 525-4161 or
[email protected]
DIALOGUES WITH DARWIN
New Exhibition Traces the Evolution of Darwin’s Big Idea,
Opening April 17, 2009
Philadelphia, PA, April 6, 2009… Charles Darwin’s big idea wasn’t simply evolution.
Other men, including his own grandfather, had suggested it many years before. His big
idea was a full-blown theory of “evolution through natural selection.”
Darwin published his theory in 1859 in On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, in
1859. More importantly, he provided extensive evidence, obtained through painstaking
observation and experimentation on everything from pigeons to plants to back it up.
As the first major statement on evolution and how it works, it was the beginning
of modern biology. He continued to refine, revise, and defend it from a multitude of
critics for the rest of his life.
Today, Darwin still stands at the swirling center of a scientific dialogue that began
before him and has continued ever since.
Dialogues with Darwin, an exhibition drawn from the American Philosophical
Society’s own Darwin collection—the largest outside of Cambridge, England—
celebrates the great man’s 200th birthday and the sesquicentennial of the publication of
his revolutionary book. On view, beginning April 17, 2009, in the jewel-box gallery on
the first floor of historic Philosophical Hall, are rare first-editions and sumptuously
illustrated books, maps, and manuscripts that span more than a century, from the 1830’s,
when Darwin jotted down his first thoughts on evolution to the 1940’s, when his work
was accepted as the basis for all the life sciences. Most important are Darwin’s own
letters and books that trace his intellectual journey from amateur naturalist to iconic
scientist.
The exhibition is about the history of Darwin’s famous theory. It is designed to
encourage visitors to examine and participate in several types of dialogues. Visitors will
be able to follow the scientific dialogue that shaped Darwin’s thinking and led to the
publication of the Origin—sparking the first truly international scientific debate in
history—and they also will be able to compare and contrast the work of Darwin with that
of his colleagues and successors up to the 1940’s.
Commissioned contemporary art inspired by the objects on view will create an
intriguing dialogue between science and art. Participatory Post-It® Notes boards in the
exhibition and lively online forums will encourage visitors to contribute their own
commentary and continue the conversation.
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Darwin at the American Philosophical Society
The core of the APS’s Darwin collection is 807 letters by Darwin and 24 letters to
Darwin (10% of all the known Darwin correspondence). It also contains 116 manuscript
items including manuscript pages from On the Origin of Species. Among the treasures
from this collection on view in the exhibition are:
 Darwin’s hand-written draft of the title page for the Origin. (1859)
 Letter to Charles Lyell expressing alarm about Alfred Russel Wallace’s
competing paper suggesting a form of natural selection. (1858)
 A hand-written manuscript page from the Origin. (1859)
 Letter to Charles Whitley describing preparations for the Beagle voyage.
(1831)
 First American edition of the Origin (1860).
In addition, the Society recently acquired the James Valentine collection of
Darwin’s publications. Dr. Valentine, professor emeritus of evolutionary biology at the
University of California, Berkeley set out over 50 years ago to collect every edition and
every variant of every book by Charles Darwin, in as many languages as possible. The
4,000 volumes, including many first editions, represent the dissemination of Darwin’s
ideas around the world.
The Scientific Dialogue
Ideas about evolution were in the air in Victorian Britain. During his student days
in Edinburgh and Cambridge, young Darwin was introduced to the most up-to-date
thinking. But, it was on his five-year voyage around South America and to the Galapagos
Islands as a naturalist aboard H.M.S. Beagle, that he began to put the first pieces of the
evolutionary puzzle together. Visitors will be able to see many of the books he read on
the trip that had the deepest influence on him including:
 Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830-33). Considered the greatest
geologist of his day, Lyell’s argument, called uniformitarianism, held that
small gradual changes, rather than sudden catastrophic ones, formed the
earth.
 Alexander Von Humboldt, De distributione geographica
plantarum…(1805). This internationally celebrated great man of science’s
holistic approach to the study of the natural world inspired generations of
amateur naturalists.
 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Histoire naturelle des animaux sans vertèbres
(1815). The great French zoologist ‘s dynamic view of life differed from
the Biblical static view.
 T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1809). Malthus’
theory of checks on population growth was decisive in helping Darwin
connect the dots.
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The Most Important Book of the Century
The publication of Darwin’s theory, 150 years ago, raised new questions about
origins and order, including the place of humans (which Darwin never mentioned in the
Origin) and the role of heredity. In the 1940s, the “evolutionary synthesis” combining
genetics and natural selection created our modern understanding of life on Earth. Visitors
can follow the debate in books and manuscripts on view including:
 Ernest Haeckel, Anthropogenie…(1874). Known as the “German
Darwin,” Haeckel’s beautifully illustrated books attempted to show that
embryological development reflected evolutionary development—
“ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”
 Louis Agassiz, Outline of Comparative Physiology (1851). Agassiz was
Professor of Zoology at Harvard and a specialist on glaciers. Even though
his own work showed strong support for evolution, he was a lifelong
opponent of Darwin’s theory.
 T. H. Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature (1863). He earned the reputation as
“Darwin’s bulldog” for his outspoken defense of Darwin in the public
forums, which the retiring country gentleman shied away from.
 Gregor Mendel, Versuche uber Pflanzenhybriden (1865). Mendel’s
original paper on plant hybridism.
 Thomas Hunt Morgan, The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity (1915).
Morgan’s experiments with fruit flies established the principles of modern
genetics.
Luminous Darwin: The “Lost” Notebooks of Charles Darwin
At the American Philosophical Society Museum the dialogue between history,
science and art is an integral part of every exhibition. For Darwin, the APS Museum has
commissioned artist Eve Andrée Laramée to create an installation based on the materials
on view. The work, both serious and whimsical, is titled Luminous Darwin: The “Lost”
Notebooks of Charles Darwin. It presents video and mixed media interpretations of
evolution in relation to the animal, vegetable and mineral realms. Laramée will fill four
large mahogany display cases with artifacts, objects, books, and strange, scientific-like
devices showing videos about each of her fictional “lost” Darwin notebooks: Notebook
X: The Dreams of The Plants; Notebook Y: The Memories of The Stones; and Notebook
Z: The Awareness of The Cells
Laramée has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Her work has
been shown at the Venice Biennale, MassMOCA, and the Museum of Contemporary Art,
Chicago, to name a few. She is among a group of artists, including Mark Dion (whose
Urban Field Station was created for APS in 2003 and 2004), who are inspired by natural
science. Critic Ana Finel Honigman wrote, “Eve Andrée Laramée’s polemical sculpture
installations uproot assumptions about the authority of history, science and art.”
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Join the Conversation
The Darwin Correspondence Project has identified 14,500 letters exchanged
between Darwin and some 2,000 correspondents around the world. That would, of course
be what we call “snail mail,” (wouldn’t Darwin have loved that name?). For this
exhibition, the APS Museum has created opportunities for visitors to join the
conversation. Using the simplicity of Post-It® Notes on message boards in the gallery
and lively online forums—dubbed “Diablogs”—visitors will be invited to participate in
the dialogue with Darwin.
APS Forums or “Diablogs” will be offered at www.apsmuseum.org throughout the
run of the exhibition. Two will be available when the show opens:
 Exhibition Talk: Visitor Commentary will involve direct responses to the material
on view;
 “Would Darwin Blog? Science and Communication in the 19th and 21st centuries.
Many “Diablogs” will be open to the general public; others will be limited to specific
audiences such as high school students or teacher organizations.
Information
Dialogues with Darwin will be on view in Philosophical Hall, 104 S. Fifth Street, from
April 17, 2009 – October 17, 2010.
Hours: Thursday – Sunday
Friday – Sunday
Wednesday
10 a.m. – 4 p.m. (March 1 – Labor Day)
10 a.m. – 4 p.m. (Labor Day – March 1)
5 p.m. – 8 p.m. (May 1 – Labor Day)
$1 Requested Donation
Digital Images Available Upon Request
In 2001, the American Philosophical Society, our nation’s oldest learned society, opened
a museum in Philosophical Hall for the first time since Charles Willson Peale created
American’s first successful museum there in 1794. For the past eight years, the American
Philosophical Society (APS) Museum, adjacent to Independence Hall, has presented
exhibitions exploring the intersections of history, science, and art, drawn largely on the
Society’s wide-ranging collections
Information at http://www.apsmuseum.org
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