Chad's New and Hot, Week 6

Darwin Exhibit!

My new and hot for this week is an article revealing that an exhibit on Charles Darwin is to be opened in Chicago Field Museum this summer. This exhibit, running from June 15 through the end of the year, will feature manuscripts and other pieces of Darwin’s personal belongings. The exhibit will focus not only on his writings while onboard the Beagle and the way that he developed his theory of natural selection, but it will also feature letters to his wife and family portraits that show Darwin’s human side.

To find out more about this exhibit, I visited the museum’s website and was amused to immediately find an example of a debate that we brought up earlier in class. Under the link for the exhibit’s info page, the first sentence of the description reads: “For 21 years, he kept his theory a secret.” I just found it pretty funny, but also a little troublesome, that they presented this reason for Darwin’s delay as a concrete fact although Darwin’s true motives are still not known for certain. Maybe this exhibit plans to emphasize the elements of Darwin’s life and writings, such as his religion, that support this particular theory. With the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Field Museum (Chicago), the Museum of Science (Boston), the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), and the Natural History Museum (London) all cooperating on this exhibit, it promises to be an exciting one.