Reynolda House Symposium to Discuss Charles Darwin's Influen

Press Room

Reynolda House Symposium to Discuss Charles Darwin's Influence on American Culture, Thought

Thursday, September 24, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Sharyn Turner
336.758.5580
sturner@reynoldahouse.org
or Sarah R. Smith
336.758.5524
manselss@reynoldahouse.org

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (September 22, 2009) In recognition of the 150 th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species," Reynolda House Museum of American Art will host an interdisciplinary symposium titled " 'Curious Spectacle': Charles Darwin and the Art of Observation" on Saturday, Oct. 3, from 12 to 5 p.m. The symposium will focus on the book's influence on American visual culture and thought, while examining the tropical landscape paintings of Frederic Church and their connections to the tradition of scientific inquiry exemplified by Darwin.

Admission to the symposium is $25 for Reynolda House members and students, $35 for non-members. For information and to register, please call 336.758.5900 or visit reynoldahouse.org.

The symposium represents the professional debut of Reynolda's Betsy Main Babcock Postdoctoral Curatorial and Teaching Fellow, Jennifer Raab, whose scholarship has focused on Church's landscapes and their engagement with the work of investigative explorers like Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt. Raab will open the symposium with a talk titled "Darwin's Details: Frederic Church and 19th-Century Scientific Thought."

Other speakers include Eric Wilson, Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University; Miles Silman, associate professor of biology at Wake Forest University; and Alex Rosenberg, R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. They will explore topics ranging from the influence of Darwin on Henry David Thoreau to the relationship between present-day human activity and the decline of species.

The event will conclude with a round-table discussion led by David Lubin, Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest University.

Registration for the symposium includes a viewing of the museum's period installation of its Church masterpiece, "The Andes of Ecuador." The installation, "The Andes of Ecuador: Science and Spectacle," allows visitors to view the work the way Church originally presented his paintings to the public—swathed in velvet curtains and examined with opera glasses in a private setting.

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation's premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its permanent collection. Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features traveling and original exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and other events. The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150.

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