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Rock of Ages, Sands of Time, paintings by Barbara Page, text by Warren
Allmon, University of Chicago Press, $45, ISBN 0226644790

TO SEE fossils grouped as they might be found in the ground normally involves
tramping between different collections, or even different museums. Collections
are separated into groups—vertebrate, invertebrate and so on. It’s
logical, but it doesn’t give any information about fossils as archaeologists
find them, an essential point in interpretation.

This monumental work should be the answer. Next year the Museum of the Earth
is due to open in Ithaca, New York, and startle visitors with a 500-foot display
of Page’s painted panels of fossils. Each panel represents a million years of
life on Earth. They show fossils au naturel, as it were.

The book consists of full-colour reproductions of every panel. The artist
herself writes an introduction that, although matter-of-fact in tone, leaves you
in no doubt that great intellectual effort in the planning of the panels has
complemented the consummate skill of execution of the images. There is a feeling
of excitement about this project, especially in the foreword by Rosamond Wolff
Purcell. And it’s catching.

The publishers refer to “the awesome impact of an aeon’s worth of time spread
across 500 feet of bas-relief panels”. The panels are indubitably
paintings—not bas-relief sculptures. It’s an odd mistake. Sales of the
book are not likely to be high, mainly to paleontological institutes that should
presumably purchase a unique example of cooperation between art and science.
Will there be many amateurs interested enough in fossils to join them?