Peabody Museum reopens after four years
Upon entering the cathedrallike space of the newly renovated Yale Peabody Museum, a group of first graders soon forgot to use their indoor voices. As they peered over the railing down at the soaring, reassembled massive skeleton of a Brontosaurus, they chatted away loudly while being led by a tour guide.
“Who can tell me what Brontosaurus ate?” Jim Sirch, an education coordinator for the museum, asked the youngsters. A chaperone quickly translated the question into Spanish and the kids animatedly discussed among themselves in two languages.
“Plants! Plantas! Yes!” said Sirch as he heard correct guesses. “But how did this dinosaur protect itself ?”
That gave them pause — some children guessed that Brontosaurus might use its long neck to fend off predators. Sirch nudged the kids to think a little more about it. One of the kids offered that maybe it might have used its long, whip-like tail.
“That’s right! So if a meat-eater came around, the Brontosaurus might do this,” said Sirch waving his arms in a whip-like animated fashion for the crowd of giggling students.
It’s been three years since the renowned museum has heard the squeals of happy children on a field trip, awed by the rich collection of dinosaur bones and ancient artifacts.
Today was the first day of the Yale Peabody Museum’s soft reopening. Two classes of New Haven public school students, sixth graders from the Augusta Lewis Troup School and first graders from the Family Academy of Multilingual Exploration were the first to visit the museum since it closed in 2020 for renovations, just after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
A grand, soft reopening
Early Tuesday the children bounced off the buses, high-fiving Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker as they passed by. The halls of the museum were quickly filled with high-pitched voices echoing off the soaring ceilings.
“Our kids are excited, our staff is excited at the amount of learning that is going to take place for them as they see the exhibits,” said Keisha Redd-Hannans, an assistant superintendent for New Haven Public Schools.
Redd-Hannans said she and other school administrators had been given a tour about a month ago and asked if New Haven Public School students could be the first in the door.
“As a child growing up in New Haven, I remember the Peabody Museum,” said Redd-Hannans, who was awestruck by how lifelike the Brontosaurus was. “They’ve done a great job renovating it.”
Da’Jhon Jett, a math teacher at Augusta Lewis Troup School, said that he was excited to show the kids the new, updated, lifelike exhibits and was glad the museum had opened its doors to them.
“So often our kids miss out on field trips because of financial burdens,” said Jett, adding that he hoped the museum would continue to be open to kids to explore for free.
Elicker said he was glad the Peabody was “leaning into” being a community space with free entry and classroom space for schools to use. He said he couldn’t wait to bring his own kids here again.
“The best part of this right now is seeing all these New Haven public school kids — the first kids in the building — with huge smiles on their faces, shocked at the size of these dinosaurs,” said Elicker.
“There’s thousands and thousands of kids and their families that will be able to access this space who weren’t before.”
DeLauro was practically vibrating with excitement herself.
“It’s a treasure,” the longtime congresswoman said. “You can read about this stuff in a book, but when we come here it comes alive. It really comes alive.”
Excitement, playing hooky, and things to come
Sprinkled among the students Tuesday morning were adults who also happened to be the first members of the public to visit the Peabody. They were some of the early birds able to snag an inaugural slot under the museum’s new reservation system.
A pair of women by a giant sloth fossil laughed that they were “playing hooky” from work to get an early visit in.
Marlisa Rodriguez and her adult son Carmello Hernandez said they had been coming to the Peabody regularly since Hernandez was 5. They were eager to see the new space.
“Every paleo-enthusiast nerd has their childhood museum, and this one’s definitely mine,” said Hernandez, who was wearing a faux dino-scaled backpack and carrying a plush stegosaurus.
He said he was glad to see that all the exhibits were updated with current science. “It’s fresh and new and it does feel right.”
“They’re showing them in a different light,” Rodriguez of the dinosaur fossils. “The way the old building was, it felt like home. This feels like home, being here, but I’m seeing these animals in a different way.”
On the second floor, a group of graduate students from Yale University marveled at the new gallery of the history of science and technology.
“We work with very precise, very advanced instruments to take extremely specific measurements,” said Yale graduate student Eleanor Stewart-Jones. “It’s so cool to see how some of those instruments evolved.”
“It’s also impressive what they were able to do, to make and to figure out,” added Alexander Hegg, another graduate student. “We’re able to see what they were able to do with what they had at the time.”
Missing from the museum’s opening were some of the anthropological, live and touchable exhibits the Peabody plans to add. After finishing his tour with the first graders, Sirch said that’s something he’s looking forward to.
“We just got the permit for putting in some live tropical butterflies,” said Sirch. In the coming weeks those butterflies, a large Eastern Indigo snake and drawers of touchable artifacts will be put out in the learning lab space, he said.
“We’ll have a brand-new poison dart frog case” in a natural environment with tropical plants, said Sirch.
Sirch said that while the dinosaurs were definitely a highlight of the museum, you can never predict what will draw the attention of visitors of all ages.
He said that one of his touring first graders had stopped to point out some preserved butterflies on display, while others were stopped dead in their tracks by the giant extinct sea turtle.
“What’s really special about a natural history museum, and museums in general, is that you never know what might jump out,” said Sirch.
Interested museum-goers can go to the Peabody Museum website at https://shop.peabody.yale.edu/#/Admission to reserve a time for visits during the soft reopening. The museum is using the reservation system for the first 30 days to control crowds while final touches are added. Admission is free and will continue to be free after the soft reopening period has expired.