Darwin: The Evolution Revolution - review

(This review was originally written for The Beagle Project Blog, and the request to review the show was made by Humble Woodcutter of The Free Range Academy.)

Darwin: The Evolution Revolution at the Royal Ontario Museum

Posters of a man in black and white, a green iguana, and bright pink orchids abound in transit shelters across Toronto. Darwin: The Evolution Revolution exhibit is on at the R.O.M., my hometown’s museum that has caused so much buzz in the past year after being “crystallized”.
To introduce myself, my name is Glendon Mellow, and I am honoured and thrilled to be writing this review for The Beagle Project Blog. I am an artist in awe of science who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and I blog at The Flying Trilobite. Pictures were not allowed in the exhibit, so I have done my best to provide.

Exhibit
By following a chronological look at Darwin’s life and achievements, the exhibit seduces and beguiles using only facts. He was an ordinary man, albeit with the foibles, interests and intelligence that made it possible for him to think deeply on the natural world, and much time is spent on this at the beginning. The exhibit pulls no punches with evolution by natural selection later in. In that matter-of-fact, writ-large-with-no-punctuation way that museums do so well, evolution as a proven fact is stated again and again. As it should be.

As a visual kind of guy, let me give you the rough sketch of what the exhibit feels like. The exhibit is below ground, under an overhang in the R.O.M.’s Staircase of Wonders; the overhang is perfectly suited, as it displays “Mammal Weaponry” with everything from antlers to a narwhal tusk. The main portion of the exhibit features darkly stained wooden glass cabinets. Small curios featuring antique magnifying glasses of interesting construction dot the exhibit, each enlarging some beetle or hummingbird or plant or fossil. The piece that most struck me with a shiver of Darwin’s presence included a small drawing of Leptura quadrifasciata in a letter to his cousin, inscribed, “the insect is more beautiful than this drawing”. (I could go on and on about an 1840 lithograph by George Scharf of a Toxodon platensis skull fossil, but I really shouldn’t.)

To me, the importance of information in a museum is paramount, and this exhibit delivers. You can catch brief titles, or spend a couple of hours looking over everything. As I have often observed at the Toronto Zoo, it is amazing how some people have opinions on displays without first reading them. At the diorama of the Galapagos seashore, which features robustly stuffed marine iguanas and a couple of green iguanas, I over heard one young man ask his girlfriend, “Those real?” to which she replied, “Yeah, but they’re like dinosaur-age iguanas”. They then moved forward to read the placards.

There are so many things I did not know: I had no idea he discovered Megatherium; was related to the Wedgewoods; or argued his Captain about the immorality of slavery and was almost left on shore because of it. I hope the curators are quite proud of how this exhibit came together; it is a treasure. Live frogs, an iguana, tortoises, orchids, venus fly-traps, fossils of Pleistocene megafauna, skeletons of bats, primates and the homology of forelimbs feed the eyes and entice the curious.

Reactions
“I wish this guy was still alive; I’d introduce him to God.”
One stomping teenage girls’ commentary notwithstanding, the people I observed seemed to be curious and enjoying themselves. There are five short movies playing and three were well-attended, the last two being grouped so close together their sound overlapped. After hearing palaeontologist and trilobite-rockstar Richard Fortey say something to the effect of biodiversity being “…all the spiritual present in the world I need,” I overheard one patron utter, “Works for me.” A nearby wall about current controversies remained well-attended.

This video featuring Fortey was on a vertical flatscreen on a pillar near the large evolution by natural selection exhibit. It was set at an average person’s height, with the commenters’ addressing the viewers on their own level. It featured Francisco Ayala, Eugenie Scott, Niles Eldridge, Georgia Dunston and Kenneth Miller. The natural selection exhibit is clear and easy to follow. Evolution has been observed in the lab amongst bacteria, which reproduce quickly. The connection of slower, larger reproducers from eohippus to the modern horse is clearly made.

A child’s perspective
On this visit, my wife and I brought our six-year old nephew, who for the sake of his anonymity I shall refer to as Obi-Wan. An easily overlooked workbook is at the entrance, (in both official languages, mais oui) urging children to become Darwin’s assistant.

The booklet was terrific, starting Obi out by investigating the two tortoises and comparing their features. Many times our nephew Obi crouched down on the floor after figuring out what the answer was that he needed to finish another section. We received a lot of curious looks and some comments from passers-by. When Obi was filling out some true or false answers and he guessed at one, my wife pointed out that he shouldn’t guess, as he did not yet have any evidence. He was incredibly excited when he found the answer, and I feel that lesson may stick.

At another point, Obi was moved to draw abruptly, and asked to borrow my sketchbook so he could draw the dwarf armadillo on display next to the glyptodont. He spent about five minutes leaning against the angled placard, and drew this brilliant armadillo, starting with its detailed toes.

A video screen found in a few areas deftly illustrated natural selection better than my bungled attempt. It features bright orange and green bugs zipping around a background of green leaves. As the bird (clicking a button), Obi clicked the obvious orange bugs out of existence –almost! Then the screen turned the shade of orange as the orange bugs! The green ones are being eaten!

The kids’ area at the end was almost an afterthought, even with their version of The Beagle.

Conclusion
The exhibit is well-displayed and rigorous in its main points; Darwin was a normal, decent person; evolution by natural selection is true and makes sense; and though controversy remains, the natural world is deserving of the wonder Charles Darwin gave it. I highly recommend it, and hope it is indicative of the pursuit of displaying scientific truths about the natural world that we should expect from institutions such as the Royal Ontario Museum.

When I asked my nephew what he thought the skeleton of the chimpanzee hanging from the tree was, he studied it and asked, “a person?”

“Yeah, close!” I replied.

Darwin: The Evolution Revolution is on at the Royal Ontario Museum until August 4 2008.

All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence. See sidebar for details.

My Trilobite Ring

A few years ago, while shopping in The Museum Company at the mall, my fiancee-at-the-time and I came across some trilobite jewellery. It was so emblematic of my tastes, I was desperate for a ring. It is an elrathia kingii inset in steel, and if you flip it over and look at the inside of the ring, the fossil's belly, still retaining ancient dirty matrix, is visible. Elrathia are known for having 13 pleurae down their bodies (little spiny lines off to each side).

Michelle bought it for me, and in some ways, it felt a little like an engagement ring to me. Now we are married, and I covet this ring. It is...precious...to me.

I seldom wear it now. It is 550 million years old, and it is eroding at my touch. I put it on at special occasions, or sometimes just as a treat and inner distraction. You see, I have a lot of associations and mental investments swirling in the memetic wind around this ring.

My wife gave it to me, and whenever I look at it, I think of how crazy I am about her. A flood of memories washes over me, and I begin to think of memories still to come. This fossil, with its tiny compound calcium carbonate eyes has been around 550 million years. And now it's existence is congruous with my own, and with the experiences my wife and I share.

When this little arthropod was alive, humans were an inconceivably faint glint in perhaps some pikaia's eyes. As a fossil, will it last another 550 million years? Will one day, I be a fossil next to it, unlikely as that is?

I wear it on my right hand, the hand I create my artwork with. How is that for post-modern progression: the eons-old fossil, sitting on the hand of of the primate, while he draws and paints pictures of the fossil, which the primate hopes will give him a type of longevity, of immortality through art.

This ring has inspired my art, and is the basis for my business card, for the tattoo I plan to get this spring. It will likely inspire much more. This little trilobite is not just an emblem. It once was a tiny organism, perhaps wandering away from it's hatch-mates, poking its feelers through the sand, over a rock, feeding, respiring, evading detection by predators. I am living my life, wondering at it living it's life.

All this to me speaks to what it is to be human. As I said in my first post, I can sit here and marvel at a being long dead, but not forgotten. I can understand some things about it. And I can be inspired by it.


It is steeped in so many thoughts, it gathers and concentrates them. This is what fossils and artistry, - what science and art! - can give us. Meaning wrapped-in tightly and woven together. A memetic structure, chaotic and incomplete and growing inside my brain.

Arthropod Meeting

Being human is awesome. I like this image a lot. It's the meeting between two species separated by about 550 million years. The trilobite is similar to elrathia, (it's missing some segments, elrathia had 13).

I like this scene. You can imagine any number of things. Hot young ladybug with a penchant for wearing red with polkadots, meets worldly, older trilobite with a scottish brogue. He's aloof, an old world reserve in his demeanor. She's desperately hoping to ask him out for a cappuccino, and who knows where the evening will go? Back to his shale for a nightcap?


Or perhaps they are from the arthropod U.N., and he's concerned about dragonfly larva settling in the coastal waters of his brethren, and she is there to negotiate a truce.

Probably though, he's just thirsty, hoping she has some nice squishy aphids he can devour.