Beginning this Saturday at the American Museum of Natural History:
Darwin, the most in-depth exhibition ever mounted on this highly original thinker, botanist, geologist, and naturalist and his theory of evolution will open at the Museum on November 19, 2005, and remain on view through May 29, 2006. This exhibition continues a series of exhibitions the Museum has developed on great thinkers, explorers, and scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Ernest Shackleton, Albert Einstein, and now Charles Darwin.
This exhibition will explore the extraordinary life and discoveries of Charles Darwin, whose striking insights in the 19th century forever changed the perception of the origin of our own species as well as the myriad other species on this planet and launched modern biological science. Visitors of all ages will experience the wonders Darwin witnessed on his journey as a curious and adventurous young man aboard the HMS Beagle on its historic five-year voyage (1831–1836) to the Galapagos Islands and beyond.
The exhibition will feature live Galápagos tortoises and an iguana and horned frogs from South America, along with actual fossil specimens collected by Darwin and the magnifying glass he used to examine them. Darwin will feature an elaborate reconstruction of the naturalist’s study at Down House, where, as a revolutionary observer and experimenter, he proposed the scientific theory that all life evolves according to the mechanism called natural selection.