Peabody Museum opens after four-year renovation totaling more than $160 million The renovations to the museum — which opens this morning with free, ticketed admission — focused on increasing learning and exhibition spaces, making the Peabody more accessible to visitors from Yale, New Haven and around the world. Words by Benjamin Hernandez. Photos by Benjamin Hernandez.
Roughly 100 students from the Family Academy of Multilingual Exploration, a dual-language New Haven Public School, will be among the first members of the public to explore Yale’s renovated Peabody Museum of Natural History when it opens its doors at 10 a.m. today.
The museum closed to the public amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, two years after a $160-million donation for renovation from Edward P. Bass ’68 — the largest gift ever received by a natural history museum in the country.
The refreshed Peabody houses five new classrooms, a study gallery and a student-curated exhibition space, University President Peter Salovey wrote to the News. Salovey added that the museum’s galleries were also expanded to contain 50 percent more exhibition space and that it now houses more collection storage and research facilities for faculty and students, as well as a new education center for K-12 students from New Haven.
“The renovation is aimed at making the museum better able to serve its diverse audiences from Yale students to K-12 school groups and public visitors from greater New Haven and beyond,” Salovey wrote. “The new museum is designed to be accessible to all.”
Labels throughout the museum have also been added to acknowledge different aspects of the University’s history, including its ties to eugenics and the exploitative practices under which certain objects in its collection were obtained.
Open galleries explore extinctions, climate change and human culture
According to Susan Butts, Director of Collections and Research, the museum’s first-floor galleries “are a walk through time,” stretching from the oldest multicellular life on Earth until the appearance of humans in the present time.
Walking through the “A World of Change Exhibit” on the first floor, Director of Public Programs Chris Norris added that the museum is “saying yes to climate change” by presenting the evidence of climate change — which he stated involved both quick, violent changes but also slower changes — coupled with fossil evidence.
“The main concepts that we have for this gallery are that life affects the environment, and the environment affects life,” Butts said. “The other big thing that we have for the gallery is that extinctions change everything… one of the things that we want to impress on visitors is that while things go extinct, when one thing dies out, another thing takes over in its place.”
The second floor of the Peabody has been converted from administrative offices to more exhibition space, focused on human culture, according to Associate Director of Exhibition Kailen Rogers.
Among the galleries on the second floor are the “History of Science and Technology,” “Egypt and Mesopotamia” and “Mesoamerican and Andean Civilizations.” The third floor which is opening later this spring will house a gallery on “Minerals, Earth and Space,” North American and Connecticut dioramas, “Dynamic Nature” and a “Living Lab” containing activities and some live plants and animals from the Peabody’s collection.
Rogers also said that the Peabody has altered its “storytelling approach” by incorporating shorter text panels with clear, big-idea statements written at an eighth-grade reading level. She added that some of the new text panels describe the University’s history with eugenics. The American Eugenics Society was founded on Yale’s campus at 185 Church St. in 1926 by economics professor Irving Fisher and was run largely by Yale faculty.
“So really, what we want to do is to prompt people to think for themselves, even more than before, what these objects mean to them,” Skelly said. “So we want this to feel really useful to a whole bunch of people and that gives us the scope to really lean into the public mission.”
A more accessible Peabody
The core of the museum’s renovation work aimed to make it more accessible to members of both the University and New Haven community, said Museum Director David Skelly, echoing Salovey’s statements.
Skelly added that part of this work has entailed transitioning to free admission, a goal that Salovey told the News in 2021 was among those he wished to accomplish during his tenure. To manage the expected crowding from interested visitors, the museum will use a ticketed reservation system for the first 30 days after opening. Skelly referred to this as a “soft opening,” adding that the museum’s store and third-floor exhibition space will open to the public during its grand opening weekend planned for this April.
Salovey wrote that the museum has also worked to deepen its connection with the city by entering into partnerships with the New Haven Free Public Library and New Haven public schools.
“We want this place to feel like for anybody who walks in, we've been expecting you and we're glad you're here,” Skelly said during a press tour on March 11. “What I hope we've done is really renew the way we interact and provide something to the public, as well as the Yale community … we’re a University Museum and that means that we are open to the public, but we also serve as a platform for teaching and research for the University.”
The Peabody Museum initially opened its doors in 1866 at the corner of High and Elm Street and the current building was erected in December 1925.
Contact Benjamin Hernandez at benjamin.hernandez@yale.edu and Yolanda Wang at yolanda.wang@yale.edu.