I was skeptical about it, but it got a rave review from the Globe and Mail's Kate Taylor today, so I think I will go see it.

This exhibition opened in late 2005 at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, after which it traveled to Boston’s Museum of Science and thence to The Field Museum in Chicago. After Toronto it will go to the Natural History Museum in London from October 2008 to March 2009, timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.

If anyone else sees it, let us know what you think.

ETA: Margaret Wente says:

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Despite ecstatic reviews in New York, where the show originated, the ROM couldn't rustle up a single corporate sponsor. Even in Canada, no public company dared to link its name to Charles Darwin....

This timidity is nothing new. "In the 1980s, we planned to open a Gallery of Evolution," says Allan Baker, who heads the ROM's Department of Natural History. "But there was too much opposition."

The Darwin show could hardly be described as controversial. It is a treasure trove of Darwin's original specimens, manuscripts and notes, and traces his life and times from his early years collecting beetles to the publication of the works that shook society to the core. Organized by the American Museum of Natural History in collaboration with the ROM and several other leading museums in the U.S. and Britain, it has yet to find a single corporate sponsor anywhere.

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[ 10 March 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]