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Organised by Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Fitzwilliam Museum in association with the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, this groundbreaking curatorial venture looked at the little-known influence of Darwin’s revolutionary theories on artists of the 19th Century.

Featuring more than 200 exhibits from around the world, many on display for the first time in the UK, Endless Forms examined in detail Darwin’s debt to visual imagery – and how he in turn influenced artists such as Monet, Cezanne and Landseer.

̽��ֱ��exhibition, which showed at ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum from 16 June to 4 October, was heralded by the Daily Telegraph as ‘the best show of the year’.

More than 90,000 people visited the Fitzwilliam to see artworks by Degas, Dyce and Redon juxtaposed with natural history exhibits, early anthropological photographs, minerals and taxidermy.

Announcing the award in December’s issue of Apollo Magazine, the publication pays tribute to the scale and depth of Endless Forms.

It says: “ ̽��ֱ��curators of ‘Endless Forms’, Diana Donald and Jane Munro, made an intellectually persuasive and visually enthralling case for the influence of Darwinian thought on artists in the second half of the 19th century.

“ ̽��ֱ��exhibition ranged from the impact of the discovery of geological ‘deep time’, which haunts Dyce’s celebrated Pegwell Bay, to Darwin’s ideas about sexual selection, which may help explain why the peacock became a familiar symbol of the aesthetic movement.

“Particularly enlightening was the treatment of Darwin’s book on the expression of emotions in man and animals, which was read enthusiastically by Degas, among other artists. This was a rare, and very successful, example of an exhibition that combined a strong argument with powerful aesthetic pleasure.”

̽��ֱ��exhibition in Cambridge was funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of Darwin200 – a national programme celebrating Darwin's life, work and impact – and ̽��ֱ��Philecology Foundation, with additional support from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press and other donors
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