Press Releases

Tania Kovats selected to create giant Museum artwork

Tania Kovats has triumphed over strong competition, including Turner Prize winners, to be awarded the honour of creating a new permanent ceiling artwork at the Natural History Museum. Her TREE proposal was selected over the nine other, high-quality, proposals from the short listed artists in the Darwin’s Canopy project.

TREE will involve a cross-section of an entire 200-year-old oak tree cut lengthways, including the roots, trunk and branches and inserted into the ceiling of the mezzanine gallery, using a process similar to veneering. At more than 17 metres long, it will become one of the largest specimens at the Museum. TREE is inspired by Charles Darwin’s iconic sketch of the branching tree to represent evolution in his transmutation notebook.

Work will start immediately on TREE, to be unveiled on 12 February 2009, exactly 200 years after Darwin was born. TREE is a slice through a vast living organism, symbolising many other things: how we organise and disseminate our thinking, connectivity and how the scientific gaze can penetrate living things. It also relates to the range of collections and galleries within the Natural History Museum, the architectural language of the building, such as other ceiling panels with motifs from nature, and the craft of presenting a specimen. TREE takes its place among the Museum’s magnificent collection of other real things from the natural world.

Tania Kovats said: ‘TREE came out of my time in South America, where Darwin has been an inspiring travelling companion. I am delighted to be able to make a tribute to this unique individual, in such a wonderful institution. When I visited Downe House (Charles Darwin’s former home) last autumn it left me with an understanding of Darwin's relationship with the British Isles and his social and scientific community, which has balanced my understanding of his travelling.’

‘I think the tree is a really useful model of thought, and the cross-section is a way of understanding anything in the natural world. It’s particularly important in geological drawing and this way of visualising and conceptualising objects is associated with the scientific gaze to be able to see through something. Darwin’s branching tree drawing in one of his notebooks where he started to put his ideas down about evolution is one I’ve thought about a lot. He wrote at the top of the page “I think” and then his thought breaks down and becomes an image. It’s a branching thought almost, whether a tree or a coral, quite remarkable for how it presents to him a proof of where his thoughts are going. It was a trigger for how I wanted to respond to working with the Museum.’

‘What I have always loved about the Natural History Museum is how it is such a magnificent collection of real things and all the exquisite craft that has gone into both the building and the display of these things.’

The judging panel, of art, science and architecture experts was hugely impressed with the 10 proposals describing them as strong and powerful explorations of Darwin's ideas and his legacy. The judges stressed the strength of the exhibition at the Museum and wished to record their admiration for the outstanding presentations produced by all the artists.

The expert panel selected the final work by identifying which proposal:

• was most sympathetic/appropriate in its response to the Grade I listed Waterhouse building;
• most encapsulates Darwin’s ideas and their contemporary significance to our understanding of the natural world and understanding our place within it;
• can be delivered as a completed work by the end of January 2009, to open on Charles Darwin’s bicentenary on 12 February 2009;
• was one of the most outstanding works of contemporary art.

‘The judges were unanimous in their decision that Tania's response to this challenge was the most appropriate, even exceeding the criteria, and is an excellent response from the contemporary arts. It is considerate to the Grade 1 listed building and explores one of Darwin's core ideas, that all living things share a common evolutionary origin,’ said Bob Bloomfield, the project leader.

‘Tania's work draws heavily on her understanding of science, the reference of the 'section' to geological observation, for example, is a crucial reference to Darwin's own knowledge. The work connects with the tradition of specimen collecting, preservation and curation, which lies at the heart of the natural history museums.’

The exhibition showing all the proposals, Darwin’s Canopy, is the first event in a nationwide programme called Darwin200, celebrating Darwin’s ideas and their impact around his two hundredth birthday. This free temporary exhibition runs until 14 September 2008 and features drawings, paintings and models illustrating the 10 artist concepts for the ceiling in the Grade I listed Museum.

All the artists - Christine Borland, Dorothy Cross, Mark Fairnington, Alison Turnbull, UnitedVisualArtists, Tania Kovats, Mark Wallinger, Richard Wentworth, Rachel Whiteread and Richard Woods, participated in a two-day intensive workshop with the Museum’s scientists and collections. This enabled them to explore Darwin’s ideas and what they mean for our understanding of nature and our place within it.

Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse designed the Museum to be a home to nature, exploring the organisation of the natural world through the building. It opened to the public in 1881. He filled the Central Hall ceiling with plant motifs to suggest a growing canopy, sheltering the many animal terracotta sculptures around the building. The original decorations of the ceiling in the gallery were lost in the 1970s when it was converted to a restaurant. The records of these decorations have not survived in the Museum archives.

The project is supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which has played a fundamental part in helping to develop a contemporary arts programme at the Museum. Most recently the contemporary arts programme has included Cape Farewell’s exhibition The Ship: the Art of Climate Change, featuring work by Antony Gormley, Siobhan Davies and Ian McEwan and Mark Dion’s Systema Metropolis, which was developed with Museum scientists.

Andrew Barnett, Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, said: “The Foundation aims to enrich and broaden people’s lives and supports projects that are innovative and involving. To this end we have encouraged science organisations to engage with contemporary art in the belief that they should commission new work that is as challenging as the science they engage in.”

The judges:
Sharon Ament – director of Public Engagement, the Natural History Museum
Siân Ede – art director, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
Richard Cork – independent art critic
Richard Fortey – scientist and scientific writer
Judith King – contemporary art curator, English Heritage Contemporary Art Programme
Judith Nesbitt – chief curator, Tate Britain
Sunand Prasad – president, Royal Institute of British Architects

Notes for editors

• Tania Kovats is a British artist who works primarily in sculpture and in the exploration of landscape. She has exhibited widely and her sculptures are in many public and private collections. Since being the Henry Moore Drawing Fellow in 2004, Kovats has become increasingly interested in drawing. In 2005 she published The Drawing Book, her personal exploration of the form. Her works in the public realm include The Museum of the White Horse, a landscape museum housed in a converted horsebox, her response to the archaeological landscape. In Meadow, she transported a wild flower meadow from Bath to London on a working canal boat via the inland waterways of central southern England. She is currently exploring Darwin’s epic voyage while travelling in South America.
• Selected by Time Out in 2007 as one of the Seven Wonders of London, the Natural History Museum is also a world-leading science research centre. Through its collections and scientific expertise, the Museum is helping to conserve the extraordinary richness and diversity of the natural world with groundbreaking projects in 68 countries. www.nhm.ac.uk
• For more information about all the Darwin200, please visit www.darwin200.org
• The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is a charitable foundation with headquarters in Lisbon and a UK branch based in London. The UK branch, established in 1956, has long held a reputation for recognising and initiating innovative ideas. The foundation’s arts programme focuses on supporting artists’ research and development and has been a pioneer in promoting activities in which artists engage with science. Key publications include Strange and Charmed: Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts, Science, Not Art: Ten Scientists’ Diaries, the award-winning Wild Reckoning: An Anthology Provoked by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Signs and Humours: The Poetry of Medicine.

Visitor information for Darwin's Canopy
Admission: free
Exhibition: open to the public: 4 June –14 September 2008
Venue: the Natural History Museum
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday 10.00–17.50
Visitor enquiries: 020 7942 5000 Monday–Friday, 020 7942 5011 Saturday–Sunday
Website: www.nhm.ac.uk