A collaborative exhibit inspired by Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species will debut next week in Emory Library’s Schatten Gallery.

Director of the Schatten Gallery Julie Delliquanti said the exhibit will showcase diverse points of view and the interconnectivity between the arts and science.

“We’re trying very hard not to take a stand on the theory of evolution or natural selection,” she said. “[The exhibit] is more about the origin of creativity, ... the evolutionary process, the ideas that we start with and how those things change as you’re exposed to either new ideas or new evidence or new processes.”

This year marks the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species as well as the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, making the exhibit timely, Delliquanti said.

Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Library (MARBL) patron Stuart Rose (’76B) loaned two first-edition copies of On the Origin of Species, one of which contains a handwritten note by Darwin. Only 1,250 first-edition copies of the book were printed and 1,170 were sold. Delliquanti said these books will act as the centerpiece of the exhibit.

Delliquanti said the upcoming exhibit is unlike most Schatten Gallery exhibits because it does not feature the library’s special collections. In the past, the gallery has featured exhibits concerning literature, music and artwork.

“[The exhibit] is really an unusual combination of things,” Delliquanti said. “We’re a humanities-type library, so we wanted to have something that would be interesting to a lot of the undergrads, but also something that would be fun and ask people to think differently about things.”

The exhibit will consist of three sections; “Species Icons” by Emory biology research specialist Nancy Lowe, “Innerspace” by Michael Oliveri, chair of the digital media department at the University of Georgia, and “The Evolution of Crow” by researcher Tara Bergin and visual artist Alan Turnbull.

Lowe created visual works using text from On the Origin of Species and also secured specimens such as taxidermy birds and and insects from the Fernbank Museum of Natural History for the exhibit.

Oliveri worked with scientists at UGA to create large format panoramic photos of “nanoscapes” using scanning electron microscopes.

“His piece is about how artists and scientists collaborate and how an idea can come from a non-traditional place and how that can evolve over time,” Delliquanti said.

Bergin began research at MARBL in spring 2008 for her dissertation on Ted Hughes. The third component of the exhibit, “Evolution of Crow,” explores how Hughes’ collection of poems “Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow,” evolved and changed over the course of Hughes’ work.

Bergin’s husband Turnbull created a series of etchings based on Bergin’s scholarship. The scholarship and etchings will come together to form the “Evolution of Crow.”

“Nothing ever comes out as what it was in the beginning. ... We all sort of evolve into something else through our own means or being influenced by other things,” Delliquanti said.

Delliquanti said the uniqueness of the upcoming exhibit will be a “nice break” between the Alice Walker exhibit, which closed on Sept. 28, and the Salman Rushdie exhibit, which will begin in on Feb. 25, 2010. Both exhibits feature prominent authors.

“You need breathing space between two text-heavy exhibitions and we thought this would be fun,” Delliquanti said.

“We do provide exhibitions and materials that will appeal to a wide audience because not everybody is a literature major,” she said.

“For us, [the exhibit] is a way to get people ... to come to the exhibit who may not normally come to the library,” she added.

While Delliquanti said she does expect some people to take issue with the nature of the exhibit, she said the exhibit does not aim to push an agenda on the theory of evolution.

“We’re taking [the idea of On the Origin of Species] and running with it in a different direction,” Delliquanti said.

— Contact Kate Borger