This exhibition considered a small part of nature's history. It presented, through images and texts, four of the categories by which nature was percieved in 19th-century Britain and America. The inspiration and the source of its themes and labels was the recent publication, 'Nature. Western Attitudes since Ancient Times' by Peter Coates.
The following is a quote from Peter from that publication: "Nature is often presumed to be an objective reality with universal qualities unaffected by considerations of time, culture and place.... [Yet] nature has been variously considered both part of us and quite apart from us, nurturing and dangerous, animate and machine-like, spiritual and material. Nature, like us, has a history."
UNC-CH undergraduate, Elizabeth Materne, curated this exhibition for the Johnston Scholars' freshman seminar, "Stretching the Truth: the Ideals and Rituals of the University." one of the texts discussed in the seminar was Coates' 'Nature'.