Blanket coverage ... Richard Woods' artwork Style Species Photograph: Martin Godwin
Time was, scientists didn't talk to artists very much, perhaps knowing that they wouldn't say much in return.
But that's all but forgotten. Chances are, if you're an artist seeking a juicy commission, your best bet is to hang outside the Wellcome Trust, cleaning their plentiful windows until something better comes along, or to put the word "science" somewhere near the top of your Arts Council grant application.
Best of all, though, is to include the word "Darwin". Two hundred years old next year, Darwin's stock is at an all-time high. Spearheading the Darwin 200 celebrations, commemorations and general bout of highly-evolved activity, the Natural History Museum have a series of events and exhibitions planned. The institution, housed in a veritable cathedral to the man, is after all itself the offspring of the scientific revolution Darwin did so much to bring.
To acknowledge this fact, the museum invited 10 shortlisted artists to compete to create Darwin's Canopy, a permanent ceiling installation. Following a two-day workshop with scientists from the museum, they had three months to come up with the ideas exhibited at the Darwin 200 opening last night.
Darwinian accounts are pretty ruthless, so I won't waste time on what were clearly the weaker contributions (except to say that they included one from Rachel Whiteread).
Mark Wallinger's idea was to reprint, in an elegant Garamond font, the contents of the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918, having taken out the punctuation. Given that you'll need a telescope (supplied) to read the text, the random pattern formed by the lettering's ascenders and descenders is certainly beautiful, and the concept is a good one. Poeisis means, in ancient greek, creation, and to insist on extending the concept of evolution to the art of poetry is subtle, suggestive of the wonder and unpredictability of nature rather than its cruel determinism.
Also strong -"fit"? - was United Visual Artists' idea to project a continuous computer simulation of the process of natural selection, and, of the more realist-minded contributions, Mark Fairnington's study for ceiling panels showing the evolution and proliferation of the eye, described by Darwin as the "organ of extreme perfection", was the most serious in terms of scientific and artistic value.
The winner will be announced on 16 June, the selected artwork unveiled - naturally - on Darwin's birthday February 12 2009.
