New exhibition in Cambridge celebrates Darwin's impact on the arts

17 June 2009

A new exhibition called ‘Endless Forms’, exploring the interchange between the theories of Charles Darwin and art of the late 19th century, opened at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge this week.

The Wellcome Trust has funded the free exhibition, which was organised by the Fitzwilliam Museum in association with the Yale Center for British Art - two of the world’s leading university art museums - and coincides with the global celebration of the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth.

'Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, natural science and the visual arts' explores both Darwin's interest in the visual arts and the vast range of artistic responses to his revolutionary ideas, through a diverse selection of exhibits from around the world.

The idea of a link between Darwin, the scientist, and the visual arts is at first surprising. Yet, as the exhibition demonstrates, Darwin was highly receptive to the visual traditions he inherited. In turn, his ideas about the natural world and the place of humans within it had a profound impact on European and American artists of the late 19th century.

Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection provided fertile territory for the creative imagination. Artistic responses were wide-ranging: from imaginative projections of prehistory to troubled evocations of a life dominated by the struggle for existence to fantastic visions of life forms in perpetual evolution. The exhibition also explores what Darwin found beautiful in the natural world, especially the courtship behaviour of birds and its analogy to sexual attraction in humans.

'Endless Forms' brings together a remarkable variety of nearly 200 objects and works of art, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, early photographs, caricatures, illustrated books and a spectacular range of natural history specimens. A feature of the exhibition is the juxtaposition of artworks and scientific material, from maps of geological stratification and botanical teaching diagrams to coloured ornithological specimens and a dazzling array of minerals.

'Endless Forms' has been funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of Darwin200 - a national programme celebrating Darwin's life, work and impact - and the Philecology Foundation, with additional support from Cambridge University Press and other donors. 'Endless Forms' is now at the Fitzwilliam Museum until 4 October 2009.

Image: Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, Martin Johnson Heade, 1871. Oil on panel. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.