John Muir's Birthplace

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Content updated Mon, 09 Aug 1999 15:34:18 GMT

An Infinite Storm of Beauty... [home]

The Life and Achievements of John Muir

Exhibition Themes and Contents

Someone Else's Hero

The exhibition is designed to deal with the following themes, and to answer the following range of questions:

• Who was John Muir? Why was he important? What did he achieve, and how did he do it?
• John Muir's early life in Dunbar prior to his emigration.
• John Muir's years in Wisconsin, his self-education and his inventive genius.
• The crisis that resulted in the turning point in John Muir's life.
• Muir's travels in Yosemite and the High Sierra, Alaska, etc.
• Muir the writer and environmental campaigner and lobbyist.
• The enduring legacy of John Muir.

The exhibition will feature photographs, paintings, manuscripts and artifacts from Dunbar, Wisconsin and California. Most of the American material will be on display for the first time ever in the United Kingdom. It will include historic photographs and portraits of Muir and contemporaries, drawn from the John Muir Archives at the University of the Pacific;; drawings and replicas of Muir's inventions from the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences; oil paintings of the High Sierra from the William Keith collection at the Hearst Gallery, Moraga, California; classic landscape photographs by Ansel Adams, Galen Rowell and other artists, and artifacts for the John Muir Heritage Site, in Martinez.

One of the first debates facing the new Scottish Parliament will be the proposal to create the first Scottish National Parks at Cairngorm and Loch Lomond. Will the vision of Muir, the Scots-born Father of the American National Parks, inform that policy decision?

The relevance of John Muir to the current environmental debate, in Scotland and globally, is another of the themes explore in An Infinite Storm of Beauty. The exhibition will include the commemorative medals and stamps struck and issued to honour John Muir.