It's difficult to even talk about Evolution anymore. It seems like everyone who knows that the theory exists has a strong opinion on it, so it's either preaching to a choir, or bloodying fists. The American Museum of Natural History in New York City offers an alternative for those entangled by the theory, and the battle of science versus religion, with an exhibit on the principal theorizer of natural selection, the finch man himself, Charles Darwin. By examining a man, his life, and his work, the museum hopes to teach about evolution in a less incendiary manner.

The exhibit begins with a long line which seems to perpetually string out of the hall through a narrow corridor filled with specimens from the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin made some of his most important observations. The slow entrance seems acclimate visitors for the slow movements of the greeting party to the exhibit, a pair of living, breathing galapagos tortoises. Live animals are a surprising site at a natural history museum more known for having stuffed dead things, but these tortoises move so slowly it's hard to even believe they have beating hearts. Still, they seem a perfect transition from the static displays in the rest of the museum towards the mobile, malleable perspective that Darwin brought to all of life.

Once inside the exhibit hall, the environment leans towards claustrophobic. You can tell from the very beginning that this will not be a large exhibit. Still, the presentation is immediately capturing, if not slightly cluttered. There is perhaps too much text immediately staring you down, dictating to Learn rather than Experience. It also doesn't help that the layout feels like a maze of cubicles, crowded with people and little hope of retracing steps. The large text panels on the walls have backdrops of geometrically arranged gold animals that are a bit confusing, before you find out that Darwin's mother was a member of the wedgwood family, producers and purveyors still of fine china ware. It seems that the exhibits designers strived, and succeeded to incorporate this artistic motif in Darwin's life into the core of the show.

Predictably, Darwin's paternal lineage consists of doctors and scientists. In fact, his grandfather Erasmus supposedly penned a theory of evolution decades before his grandson tackled the problem (could this be the evidence for some missing genetic component to knowledge?) The exhibit displays some of the highlights of his childhood, including a healthy obsession with a beetle collection, which spurns at least two Beatle puns in the exhibit, which will not be reprinted here. It seems like Darwin's eye for cataloging subtle features of organisms began at an early age, displayed by some early notes and drawings.

Darwin's true coming of age occurred during his worldwide 5 year voyage as a naturalist on the Beagle. There is an excellent collection of documents from this period, including a piece of paper with an ingenious system for the conservation of space; that naturalist's hands flows in one direction across the page, then the page is turned 90 degrees counterclockwise and written on top of the previous words. The intersection of the two angles of text do not seem to occlude what is written, and seems a miraculous solution to scarce paper on a long trip. Leanardo Da Vinci's backwards, left-handed writing--which he used to quicken the recording of his thoughts without smudging the ink--quickly comes to mind, connecting two great thinkers with their pens.

It is surprising to find out that Darwin's most famous natural observations, the ones which provided the roots for his theory of natural selection, came from the Beagle's brief 1 month stay at the Galapagos. Still, the resonant uniqueness of the species living on these islands made a huge impact on Darwin. Not only did species exist there which were seen nowhere else in the world, but there were even large differences between the islands. He noticed too that organisms seemed adapted to specific aspects of these islands. Making as many observations as he could, some which are displayed in his original papers in the exhibit, Darwin cataloged this information, but also collected specimens to bring back to his home. It is an exciting sight to view some of the very finches that helped Darwin understand.

Rounding another awkward cubicle wall in the exhibit, a glass case holds some living frogs from the Galapagos, reptiles that surely caught Darwin's eye during his time there given their adapted ability to blend into their environment. Orange stickers on the side of the case scream "LIVE!" inside a spiky bubble, almost as a command rather than an exclamation. It seems the curators can be excitable about a departure from stuffed animals. The specimens within the exhibit succeed more when the natural historians are in their element. In one large glass case, as the exhibit explains Darwin's distillation of his theory, a number of different vertebrate skeletons crouch in a similar position. Stripped of their flesh and external features, it is immediately easy to see the similarities between all of them, the modifications and adaptations to an original form, the vestigial structures demphisized, evolution at work.

It is not too surprising to discover that the curators can't entirely ignore the science and religion debate presented by Darwin's theory. After passing a quaint recreation of Dawrin's pristine study, a vertical and tall flat screen television is mounted on a wall with a small bench in front of it. A looped video displays life size images giving the perspectives of some prominent scientists as they explain how they can both believe in a God and in Evolution. When Francis Collins, one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project starts with "I believe in a personal God," the whole thing seems a bit contrived and forced. Watching these scientists struggle to walk lightly on this controversial turf, it becomes clearer than ever why they have such a hard time explaining Natural Selection to religious people. Not only that, but the layout of this section of the exhibit further shows that scientists must be behind the curation. From the perspective of the bench, the full size video scientists tower above their audience, speaking from a height in a manner that can't help but seem patronizing.

It would be difficult for an exhibit to visually explain that it took Darwin twenty years to finish his theory after returning from the Beagle's voyage. To someone in their twenties living in the 21st century, that amount of time seems impossibly long. It is a little depressing to learn of Darwin's marital troubles, although clearly important to understanding him as a person, and that most of his important observations were made early in his long 70 year life.

In the last corner of the exhibit, a number of live orchid species are displayed, hanging on small platforms suspended from the ceiling. Darwin was fascinated by these plants later in his life, of which there are over 20,000 total kinds, and they are a beautiful image of the vast variation that evolution can produce. Unfortunately, even though the orchids are most surely alive, they get no "LIVE!" treatment like the tortoise and frogs. Once again, the plants get no love.

In the gift shop, people are given thee opportunity to sport their gang colors by purchasing Darwin ties with galapagos animals, or black baseball hats that simply say "Darwin" in white lettering on the front. It is a constant disappointment that gift shops conclude almost all special exhibitions at museums, they always seem a sour tasting epilogue. But the true conclusion to the Darwin show occurs after exiting the exhibit. By some strange twist of fate, it happens that the shop empties out into the museums collection of Primate specimens. I have never been more certain that we are all apes, than when that stuffed chimp stared me down just as I put on my new Darwin cap.

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