Displaying items by tag: charles darwin

On Christmas Day 1833, Charles Darwin and the crew of HMS Beagle were larking about at Port Desire in Patagonia, under the keen gaze of the ship’s artist, Conrad Martens.

The crew were mostly young men – Darwin himself, a recent graduate from Cambridge University, was only 22 – and had been given shore leave. Martens recorded them playing a naval game called Slinging the Monkey, which looks much more fun for the observers than the main participant. It involved a man being tied by his feet from a frame, swung about and jeered by his shipmates, until he manages to hit one of them with a stick, whereupon they change places.

"East of the Wallace Line: Monumental Art from Indonesia and New Guinea" explores the cultural characteristics of eastern Indonesia and coastal western New Guinea. Taking as its jumping-off point the “Wallace Line,” an ecological demarcation first recognized by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace that runs through Indonesia between Bali and Lombok and between Borneo and Sulawesi, the exhibition presents intricately decorated, large-scale sculptures and textiles, as well as more intimate personal and domestic objects. With more than 120 works from the 17th to 19th century, the exhibition features highlights from the Gallery’s permanent collection and select loans, many either too large or too fragile to be regularly displayed.

Alfred Russel Wallace, who together with Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution, first identified the division that bears his name on a trip to Bali and Lombok in 1859, during an eight- year stay in the East Indies. Wallace discovered significant faunal differences between Bali and the lands to the west of the Lombok Strait and Lombok and the islands to the east.

California based auction house, Profiles in History, announced today that they will exhibit highlights from their upcoming auction, The Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector. The exhibit will be held at Douglas Elliman’s Madison Avenue Gallery from December 3 through December 9. The exhibit was supposed to be held at Fraunces Tavern Museum, but an alternate location was needed after Hurricane Sandy inflicted a fair amount of damage on the museum.

The Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector includes over 3,000 manuscripts that will be auctioned off at a series of sales beginning on December 18. The first part of the sale will include 300 of the most important letters and manuscripts from the collection and carries an estimate in excess of $8,000,000.

One of the most notable highlights of the exhibition and sale is a four-page handwritten letter by Vincent van Gogh. In the letter written to his close friends, Monsieur and Madame Ginoux, just seven months before his death, van Gogh talks of his failing mental and physical. He writes, “Disease exists to remind us we are not made of wood…” The letter, penned on January 20, 1890, is expected to bring between $200,000 and $300,000.

Other important documents on view include several manuscripts by George Washington, a Thomas Paine manuscript, a rare Emily Dickinson letter, and other correspondences by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Thomas Edison.