"Voyages of Discovery"
1999-07-04 until 2000-05-01
The Natural History Museum, London
London, , UK United Kingdom

The first ever exhibition on historical British sea voyages, Voyages of Discovery opens to visitors on Sunday 4 July 1999 until the spring of 2000. Exploring the drama of these voyages themselves and the extraordinary places, animals, plants and people they encountered in distant and unknown lands, this exhibition is the first of its kind to be staged at the Natural History Museum.

Revealing natural history treasures never seen by the public before, the Museum literally opens up its vast collection of botanical, entomological, geological and zoological specimens, historical artworks, photographs, prints and drawings, all collected on the voyages. Exhibits range from the exquisite and scienitically accurate painting of a koala bear by artist Fedinand Bauer, who travelled on the Investigator to Australia, Amozonian fish drawings by Alfred Russel Wallace, the only collections to survive the devastating fire which destroyed his ship, to a photograph of an iceberg brought back from the first oceanographic voyage by the Challanger in 1872-6. Other unique specmens include the shiny, armoured Hercules beetle collected by Joseph Banks, a pair of golden seahorses painted by Bauer and the very cooking equipment used by Banks on the Endeavour.

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