Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge, 2019

A collaboration between artist, zoologist and author Jonathan Kingdon, CCI, and the Museum of Zoology, Evolution as Inspiration explored a lifetime of observations in nature.

Kingdon, whose span of work, and influence on conservation, is extraordinary, exhibited a series of major paintings, sculptures and drawings, all of which were displayed amongst specimens of the animals that inspired them.

As well as being one of the world’s greatest naturalists – having produced some of the most important studies of African mammals and biodiversity – Kingdon has created a wealth of practice which seeks to explore and explain some of the how’s and whys of animal evolution. Born in Dodoma, Tanzania, Kingdon trained as an artist at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, and at the Royal College before teaching fine art at the Makerere University in Uganda. Since the 1980s, he has published and illustrated a major series of papers, and books, exploring the evolution of African mammals, and on human evolution, culminating in the six-volume collection, Mammals of Africa, published in 2013.