The Return of Some Old Friends

What could be finer than to stroll through the sumptuously renovated Yale Peabody Museum, to be greeted once again by those gigantic dinosaurs who’ve been kept under wraps since the pandemic struck the earth four years ago?

When I was invited to join a media tour for a sneak preview of all this, I did not hesitate. On Monday morning of this week I got there a few minutes early to see what the general public will behold, starting March 26 when the museum finally reopens.

Four years! That’s how long we New Haveners have been driving past the place, watching the construction crews and wondering what it would look like inside and when the heck we would at last get the chance to go back.

“It’s been a while coming,” conceded Yale Peabody Museum Director David Skelly as he gathered us in the new, sun-splashed Central Gallery, which he said was formerly an empty lot. “Eight years of planning, the pandemic, then three and a half years of construction, including one year of exhibit installation.”

Over our heads in the gallery — an Archelon, a giant sea turtle, posed fleeing from a Tylosaur.

“My childhood fever dream has been brought to life,” Skelly told us. “I’ve been coming here since I was five years old and I used to stare at that turtle. That scene played out in my head.”

The gallery is an inviting place for the public and the Yale community. “People will be able to come in here and hang out during lunch hour,” Skelly said.

Here’s the best thing about the new Peabody: unlike in past years, admission will be free to everybody, all the time. Go Yale!

But be patient. The Peabody set up a first come-first served ticketing system in an effort to control the crowds during the first month. Those slots were quickly gobbled up. Think about going in late April at the earliest, or in May. Anticipation is half the pleasure.

That’s what we media folks were doing as we stood in the Central Gallery — anticipating being led into the new Burke Hall of Dinosaurs. Within a few minutes Susan Butts, the director of collections, was showing us the sea scorpions at the gateway to Burke.

“The Peabody has the largest sea scorpion collection in the world,” Butts told us. “We’re delighted we have the opportunity to put these out on display, which we didn’t before.”

The Peabody people can do this because they’ve expanded from 30,000 square feet to 45,000. Nineteen new galleries are being unveiled. And so 2,215 items will be visible from the museum’s vast collection of 14 million specimens.

We turned a corner, and there he was — Brontosaurus! The restoration, backed by new research, has given him a longer tail, a new front rib and a new head. He’s 150 million years old! Sixty-five feet long!

Next we focused on what Butts called “a really engaging Stegosaurus.” The revamped Stego is more accurate in its proportion of bones. “Before there were eight spikes; we now knew it had only four.”

On the wall facing these dinos remains Rudolph Zallinger’s colorful 110-foot mural, “The Age of Reptiles.” Butts noted it now has a timeline.

Gazing around the giant hall, I recalled the night I slept there overnight with my two young daughters for an organized “Dinosnore.” I didn’t get much sleep (a sleeping bag might have been a good idea instead of just pillows) but I enjoyed looking up at the Brontosaurus from time to time. I felt he was watching over me.

My reverie was broken when Chris Norris, director of public projects, directed us into an adjacent gallery. He said when a meteorite hit Mexico 66 million years ago, it was curtains for most of the dinosaurs — but not all of them. And he pointed to a large Gastornis, a feathered bird standing in the corner.

There is a second Zallinger mural in this room, “The Age of Mammals,” illustrating climate evolution. Maybe it’s not as much fun as his reptiles depiction but it’s equally colorful and tells us what went down in our landscape through many years.

“This is a place,” Norris said, “where you can understand the planet” and how it has changed.

We were brought up to the second floor to meet Kailen Rogers, associate director for exhibitions. She took us through a new exhibit space, the History of Science and Technology. We looked at the earliest computers, cameras and telescopes. And, to the Peabody’s credit, there’s a display of Yale’s study of eugenics, a racist endeavor. The machinery includes an IQ testing device.

We were in the museum for more than 90 minutes and it’s clear we could have spent hours more exploring this world-class collection. I’ll be back there many times with my family. And yes, I admit, when the gift shop opens (always a highlight for us in years past), we’ll be splashing around in there too.