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Press ReleaseScientific and Medical Illustrations Across Seven Centuries on View at The New York Public Library, Starting October 23Related Exhibitions, Lectures, and Companion Book Accompany Centerpiece Show at Humanities and Social Sciences LibraryA medieval manuscript shows Earth at the center of the universe. The craggy terrain of the moon is revealed in a glowing 19th-century photograph. Details of human musculature emerge from a revolutionary 16th-century anatomy text. These images are among the 255 works from the 13th through 19th centuries on view in Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration, an exhibition at The New York Public Library. With illustrations from rare editions of works by such figures as Copernicus, Vesalius, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Curie, the exhibition provides insight into how scientists have relied on images to convey important and complex scientific ideas with clarity, dimension, and breadth that is not possible with text alone. It is the centerpiece of several related activities including a suite of exhibitions and lectures presented by the Library, publication of a companion book, and an exhibition at the PaineWebber Art Gallery.Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration is on view in Gottesman Exhibition Hall at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, from October 23, 1999 through February 19, 2000. The materials included are from the research collections of The New York Public Library, augmented by significant materials from The New York Academy of Medicine and loans from a private collector and The New York Botanical Garden. Admission to all Library exhibitions is free. The exhibition begins with a central section showcasing illustrations that reflect the scientific perspective of the medieval period. From there a viewer may head to any one of the additional sections on astronomy and math, physics, chemistry, natural history, and medicine, disciplines that developed as separate areas of study once science progressed from medieval to modern understanding. A special section of the exhibition demonstrates how developments in illustration techniques--relief printing, intaglio printing, planographic printing, and photography--attempted to meet the need for clarity and accuracy in relating new theories, observations, and experiments, often with aesthetically stunning results. Seeing Is Believing has been curated by Jennifer B. Lee, Associate Curator of Rare Books; and Miriam Mandelbaum, Rare Books Librarian at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is perhaps the most revolutionary and important of the works included in Seeing Is Believing. Published in 1543, his treatise stated that the planets revolved around the sun, not the Earth, as had been commonly accepted in the Middle Ages. A simple diagram of concentric circles shows the outlying planets moving around the "Sol" at its center. The volume on view is a first edition from the Rare Books Division of the Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Another work that demonstrates the move from the Middle Ages to modern understanding is Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica, also published in 1543. Vesalius was the first to base his studies on the examination of human anatomy. The first edition displayed, on loan from a private collector, is the copy that Vesalius presented to Emperor Charles V. Other works included that reflect a radical shift in scientific thought are Isaac Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica; William Harvey's De motu cordis; and two books by Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. A Window to the Collections Because The New York Public Library originated from the merger of the privately run Astor and Lenox libraries, it already possessed magnificent collections in science and medicine upon its incorporation in 1895. For example, the extremely rare copy of William Harvey's De motu cordis, the landmark 1628 work on the circulation of the blood, was given to the Astor Library in 1874 by Dr. Austin Flint, Jr. in appreciation for the Astor resources Flint used in writing his own five-volume work on physiology. Flint said about Harvey's book that "I value it more than any work I ever possessed. It is the greatest and one of the rarest works in physiological literature." Seeing Is Believing includes more than forty items from the original Astor Library. Many of the rarest items on view in Seeing Is Believing came to the Library through the collections of impassioned bibliophiles: these include a 1570 copy of Euclid's Elements from Robert Leighton Stuart's collection which had been part of the Lenox Library. Other such collections featured include the Spencer Collection of illustrated books, William Barclay Parsons's library on engineering and transportation, and the Wheeler Collection of Electricity and Magnetism. The exhibition draws broadly from the collections of The New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), which opened as a separate research library in 1996 in the former B. Altman building. Included from SIBL's collections are such items as a 1653 edition of Galileo's Sidereus nuncius and Joseph Priestley's Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air . . ., published in 1777. With its collection of some 1.5 million research volumes and a large circulating collection, SIBL is recognized as one of the foremost science libraries and the leading collection in its field open to the general public. From the time of its founding in 1895, The New York Public Library has had a close working relationship with The New York Academy of Medicine, which maintains the only medical research library in New York City open to the general public. To avoid duplication with the Academy's resources, The New York Public Library collects medical materials only when an item relates to another of the Library's collecting areas. Many of the medical books on display in Seeing Is Believing are on loan from The New York Academy of Medicine's collections. Related Exhibitions The New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library located at 188 Madison Avenue at 34th Street, will present Earth from Above: An Aerial Portrait on the Eve of the Year 2000 (October 26, 1999 - January 29, 2000), which portrays the marvels of the natural world and man's presence as seen from the air in a series of giant color photographs by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The Pforzheimer Lectures on Printing and the Book Arts Publication ### Support for this exhibition and The New York Public Library's Exhibitions Program has been provided by Pinewood Foundation. This exhibition has also been made possible by funding from The Pfizer Foundation, Inc. Additional support for this exhibition has been provided by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of State Humanities Month. A related exhibition, Beyond Appearances: Imagery in Science at the Millennium, runs from January 7 through March 31, 2000 at the PaineWebber Art Gallery. Beyond Appearances includes approximately 100 contemporary scientific images, which capture nature from the subatomic to the cosmic. The PaineWebber Art Gallery is in the lobby of 1285 Avenue of the Americas in midtown Manhattan. Hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration
is on view from October 23, 1999 through February 19, 2000, in the D. Samuel
and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall on the first floor of the Humanities
and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Exhibition hours
are Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. - 7:30 p.m., and Monday, Thursday through
Saturday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.; closed Sundays and national holidays. For recorded
information about exhibitions at The New York Public Library, the public may
call (212) 869-8089, or visit the Library's website at www.nypl.org. PRO: LS, HS: 09-26-99 THoerenz, 10-8-99 |