Plants and Animals. Atlases of Natural History in the Age of Linnaeus - visit the latest exhibition at the ICC!

Recently, everyone has been enthralled by the series "Our Planet" aired by Netflix, whose narrator includes Sir David Attenborough, perhaps the most famous voice of nature programs (besides Krystyna Czubówna!). However, we forget that the admiration of the fascinating natural world has a tradition of several centuries. Starting next week, the International Cultural Center in Cracow will feature extraordinary engravings depicting a wide variety of plant and animal specimens.

The longing for nature today becomes all the stronger, the more fragile and vulnerable to annihilation it appears to us. Once functioning as primordial, enduring and available at our fingertips, it is now associated with endangered species, dwindling resources and the need to protect what still survives. The exhibition "Plants and Animals. Atlases of Natural History in the Age of Linnaeus" responds to these signals and presents the "great beauty" of nature, still possible to experience directly.

In the Age of Linnaeus

The exhibition "Plants and Animals. Atlases of Natural History in the Age of Linnaeus" is the eleventh joint project of the International Cultural Center and Scientific Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, and the first with the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Our exhibition is an opportunity to recall one of the most important (and still not sufficiently accessible to the public) collections of graphic art, which Krakow boasts and at the same time represents the uniqueness of our city's cultural heritage. Through this exhibition we also want to emphasize the fact that natural heritage, in the same way as the cultural one, is a non-renewable resource for all of us ," explains Agata Wąsowska-Pawlik, director of the ICC.

The condition of the preserved works is so excellent that it is hard to resist the impression that we are interacting with material almost the same as the recipients at the time of its creation

Photo: J. Chojnacki

The collection is unique both because of its extraordinary artistic level and the presence of many publications widely regarded as milestones of European natural history, including the most famous and graphically outstanding ornithological and botanical albums created from the 16th to 19th centuries. The condition of the preserved works is so excellent that it is hard to resist the impression that we are interacting with material almost the same as the recipients at the time of its creation.

from admiration to knowledge

Although the primary purpose of the natural history atlases was scientific use, the craftsmanship of the engravers and printers and the extraordinary precision of their execution, as well as their aesthetic stylization, speak in favor of considering them as autonomous works of art. The selection of works made for the exhibition presented at the ICC touches on contemporary contexts: ecology, a return to an attentive interest in nature, healthy eating and diet, or slow-life trends in general.

Therich exhibition consists of more than 40 atlases of flora and fauna (both open volumes and loose pages), nearly 400 works with images of fish, more than 90 original large-format boards with representations of birds and plants. On display will be mostly never-presented editorially stunning prints and portfolios, including works by renowned naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, Georges Cuvier, Eleazar Albin, François Levaillant and the famous work by Ulysses Aldrovandi, among others.

More about the exhibition can be found on the ICC website.

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