Darwin - Natural History Museum
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
DARWIN, an exhibition that celebrates Charles Darwin’s ideas and their impact and gives new insight into the achievements of this brilliant observer of nature, will be on display at the Natural History Museum – from November 14, 2008 to April 19, 2009.
Visitors can retrace Darwin’s life-changing journey as a curious and adventurous young man aboard HMS Beagle. The voyage was a mission to chart the coastline of South America, and included the now famous visit to the Galapagos Islands.
Visitors can follow the clues that helped him develop his ideas. See his notebooks, artefacts, rare personal belongings and the fossils and zoological specimens collected on his travels. They can also discover the patterns he observed among species and the evidence he gathered for his ‘shocking theory of evolution by natural selection’ as published in On the Origin of Species.
While family photographs and letters show a different side to this famous scientist – Darwin as a family man, husband and father of ten children.
The exhibition also includes an exploration of modern evolutionary biology, enabling visitors to explore the importance of understanding evolution for controlling the emergence of new-strains of infectious disease-causing organisms.
The exhibition is part of Darwin200, a UK wide programme bringing together many organisations to celebrate Charles Darwin’s ideas and impact around the two hundredth anniversary of his birth.
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD