Office Demolition

The walls of the Museum staff offices are history. These spaces will be filled with new exhibitions, objects, and specimens when we reopen in early 2024.

Peabody Curators Stimulate Wonder through Science

Meet four Peabody curators redefining their fields and reimagining the Museum during the renovation. Read the YaleNews feature about their research and impact on the new Peabody at the following link: https://news.yale.edu/2021/07/19/peabody-curators-stimulate-wonder-through-science From L to R: Pincelli Hull, Erika Edwards, Martha Muñoz, and Jessica Thompson “These are outstanding scholars,” said Peabody Director David Skelly. “Each …

Portraits of Steel

Turner Construction let us on the worksite to get acquainted with the beams and columns that’ll be supporting the new Peabody addition. These won’t be visible when we reopen, so we thought everyone might appreciate seeing them before they’re covered up.

Crane is Up!

Things are getting serious at the Peabody worksite. It took two other cranes to construct the one we’ll be using to build the Museum addition. You’ll be seeing a lot of it in the coming weeks as Turner Construction goes vertical with our renovation. First steel coming soon!

Fossil slab being removed on pallet jack

Last Specimen Leaving

The last specimen has left the Peabody galleries. The de-installation process began on December 7, 2019, with the removal of our Brontosaurus skull and culminated today with the fossil slab from David Friend Hall. It’s been a long 18 months and thousands of objects are now safely stored for the duration of construction. Congratulations and …

Preparators cleaning Xiphactinus

Fossil Fish Cleaning

Some things were just too big to leave the building. Bolted directly into our former Discovery Room, it took our friends at Research Casting International to get this trophy fish off the wall. Now we’re giving it a makeover! Preparators Christina Lutz and Cathy Lash have been meticulous cleaning all 15 feet of Xiphactinus audax …

Moving Mammals and Digging for Cranes

It’s mammal moving season in our Vertebrate Paleontology Division. We’re clearing out the last few rooms of the Peabody basement and these oversized specimens needed a temporary home while we build them a comfortable new one. Scroll for more… The first concrete floors of the new Central Gallery have been poured and a second crane …

Last Specimens Leaving

And then there were 5… There’s been a lot of activity in the Museum over the past few weeks. With the last mineral specimens leaving David Friend Hall, there are now only five objects still on display in the Peabody galleries. Once they’re gone, our incredible staff members have successfully cleared the Museum so construction …

Wall painting of Suriname tropical forest

Found Art and Crane Construction

Look what’s been hiding for a couple decades! This mural was painted on an internal wall back in the late 90s for an exhibition about Suriname. It was covered over and forgotten by all but a few longtime staff members. We (re)discovered it last week as our final gallery spaces are cleared.  In construction news, …

Uncovering Fossil Walls

Moving our collections is yielding some incredible (re)discoveries. Placed in the walls of one of our collection spaces in the 1920’s, we’ve uncovered fossil trackway slabs covered in dinosaur footprints.