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Darwin Bicentennial: Library Rotunda Exhibit

Bicentennial Celebration of Charles Darwin: Selections from the Special Collections
Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery Rotunda
February 12 – April 1, 2009

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, FRS, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his momentous book The Origin of Species is being celebrated with an exhibition of materials selected from the Special Collections of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery. The exhibition commemorates Darwin’s ideas, life and accomplishments.

On display are rare books such as The Temple of Nature; Or, The Origin of Society, A Poem with Philosophical Notes by Erasmus Darwin (1804), which shows the beginnings of Darwin family thinking about the origins of life; On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (1859/1963); The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex: Volumes I and II (1871); and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1871), a pioneering work with insight into human mental function. Darwin explored the shared genealogical decent of humans and animals as the basis for examining expressions and gestures. A centerpiece of the exhibition is Julia Margaret Cameron’s portrait of Darwin found in Alfred, Lord Tennyson and his Friends by Julia Margaret Cameron and H.H.H. Cameron (1893).