The World's Fair

About

"The Long Room.", 1922, Charles Wilson Peale

This Peale portrait shows the front room of his museum. Peale's more famous portrait is the one where he, in sharp color, is holding back the curtain of that museum, inside of which are the wonderful curiosities of natural history. That's just in the direct sense, though: what's really going on is a guy, in post-Enlightenment America, in the vigor of the early Republic, with the hope of so-called Nature's Nation before him, revealing the beauty and wonder-filled grandeur of the natural world. So, I already said "wonder" twice. Add curiosity again, and I think the image is a nice expression of my two main motivating factors: wonder and curiosity for the world.




A watercolour by Ernst Haeckel: "Naples, a view from the observatory on Vesuvius", 1859

Ernst Haeckel, whilst a scientist of some note as well as notoriety, is probably best known for his wonderful paintings - in particular, those of the Radiolaria which were painstakingly done under the guidance of a microscope. Despite this, I'm very fond of the picture shown here, caught during a period of life where he was swayed by the enthusiasm of an artist, and almost very nearly abandon his scientific career. I like the fact that this particular picture and the pictures, that Haeckel is famous for, show two very different perspectives. Which is very appealing to me because as a science teacher, communicator (or whatever you want to call it), I think an effort to look into these different perspectives is important.