The Paper Museum review – the pelican paintings that changed art forever

Barber Institute, Birmingham
From mammoth fossils to a civet’s anal glands, these drawings of the natural world prove how modern nature photography can be traced back to the pioneering work of Galileo On 17 August 1603 – they chose the day for its excellent astrological alignments of Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury – a group of friends got together in Rome to found a society to study and record the natural world. They wanted to emulate the lynx, believed to be the most keen-eyed of