"Dialogues with Darwin": APS and the Twenty First Century Museum

Perhaps no figure looms larger in the arena of nineteenth century science than Charles Darwin. Natural selection and its legacy has often obscured the valuable work of Darwin’s contemporaries, but Darwin’s influence on evolutionary theory and its implications for modern existence cannot be understated. Housed at the American Philosophical Society Museum (APS) in downtown Philadelphia, “Dialogues with Darwin” recognizes that contribution, a celebration of the scientific giant’s 200th birthday and 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark work, On the Origin of Species (1859).

Combining traditional book and manuscript exhibition with four commissioned works by contemporary artist Eve Andree Laramee, “Dialogues with Darwin” is a temple of dichotomies: Victorian and modern, empirical and playful, conservative and innovative, professional and amateur. Explicit in the exhibit’s invitation “to explore the history of evolutionary theory and engage in your own dialogues with –and about – Charles Darwin” is an attempt to bridge the divide between museum and museumgoer. An extensive exhibit website takes the idea even further, providing a forum for general visitor responses, expanded information on Darwin and the exhibit’s holdings, and a series of “Diablogs” that prompt visitors to ponder such questions as, “Would Darwin Twitter?” The extent to which these strategies are successful remain open to debate; regardless, the American Philosophical Society Museum is tackling seriously the challenges of twenty first century museum exhibition, casting aside the Society’s somewhat stodgy eighteenth century origins, and embracing an institutional moment that rewards risk and penalizes traditionalism.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). De distributione geographica plantarum…. Paris: Lutetiae Parisiorum, 1817. "Dialogues with Darwin," American Philosophical Society.


That curator Sue Ann Prince and her staff can accommodate these divergent threads while not losing sight of Darwin, his message, and its scientific impact is impressive, particularly in such a challenging exhibition space. Content, design, and mission are all carefully considered. The exhibit will stand until October of next year and APS has a number of Darwin-inspired events planned throughout the year. One can only hope these events will embrace the same spirit of innovation and experimentation on display throughout “Dialogues with Darwin.” If events scheduled at the time of this writing are any indication, they surely will. In collaboration with the 2009 Live Arts and Philly Fringe festival APS will be hosting “Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man,” a one man performance piece that invents a personal history of Darwin’s illegitimate son. Skeptics may scoff at such abstract, performance driven content (Laramee included), but “Dialogues with Darwin,” if nothing else, hopes to open avenues of discourse, not close them, to consider science and its implications for everyday existence, not just the laboratory. In the spirit of Charles Wilson Peale, the eighteenth century artist who originally inhabited APS as a natural history museum curator (the first of its kind) Dr. Prince and her staff are peeling back the curtain and are the stronger for it.

Charles Wilson Peale, The Artist in his Museum (1822)