Exhibition : The origins of the world. The invention of nature in the 19th century May 19 – July 18, 2021

 The visit to the Musée d’Orsay

Wednesday 06/30/2021

The first visit of the Cultural Mediation Initiation Training Programme “MAHATTA had yesterday morning.

The students of the program were able to take advantage of the exhibition “Les origines du Monde. Les inventions de la nature au XIXe siècle.” at the Musée d’Orsay.

An hour and a half our visit was like a journey through history where science and the arts came together to enrich this exhibition.

This exhibition analyses the relationship between the arts and the sciences, at a time when a number of issues are emerging, of which we are still the heirs.

Finally, it is the century in which Darwin’s theory on species definitively disrupts man’s place in the world, said Laurence des Cars – president of the Orsay and Orangerie museums.

Placing man in nature, not at the centre but in a continuity that precedes and surpasses him, the theory of evolution elaborated by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in the nineteenth century comes to upset the perspectives of the world view.

In a century already subject to many changes, political, industrial, sociological, this scientific revolution comes in turn to feed the imagination of artists who seize in their own way this questioning on the origins. Laura Bossi- Musée d’Orsay.

The tree of life

The tree’s motif to depict the unity and diversity of life was proposed in 1809 by Jean Baptise de Lamark (1744-1829). Charles Darwin sketched evolutionary trees in 1837. But it is with its publication the origin of the species (1859) that the family tree is necessary to explain why the species come down from a single progeny group into genera.