Curator’s Choice Exhibitions at the Yale Peabody Museum

The Yale Peabody Museum has many more specimens and objects in its collections than can be displayed in its exhibitions. The Curator’s Choice exhibit case, in the Museum’s lobby, gives the Peabody’s curatorial divisions the chance to get some of these materials out of storage and on display for a few months. Exquisite gemstones, amazing insects and unique anthropological pieces have all been featured as a Curator’s Choice. 

Currently on Display in the Museum’s Lobby

Stanley Ball and the Vanishing Spadefoot As early as 1933, Yale Peabody Museum curator Stanley Ball sounded the alarm on behalf of a small native amphibian in Connecticut, the Eastern Spadefoot Toad.

Previous Curator’s Choice Exhibitions

	Samurai Art in Transition This display of Japanese objects from the Asian collections of the Yale Peabody Museum’s Division of Anthropology includes hand-crafted items by the artisans of the “new Japan” who used their skills to satisfy western markets in the 19th century.
	Moving Magic & Seeing Double Instruments of Victorian Entertainment The Industrial Revolution brought rapid development and innovation to Western economies. Modes of entertainment also changed to reflect the new speed of Victorian life.
	Eurypterid Fossils The Yale Peabody Museum recently acquired the Ciurca Collection, at nearly 15,000 specimens the largest and most diverse collection of eurypterids ever assembled. Eurypterids are extinct arthropods whose modern relatives include the horseshoe crabs, scorpions, spiders, mites and ticks. Although called sea scorpions, they differ from scorpions in several important respects, most striking being their tendency to grow to enormous sizes!
	Spectacle or Science? Physics in the Age of Franklin Eighteenth century traveling performers entertained audiences with “electrostatic toys” that used known scientific phenomena to magically make dolls dance and cannons explode using a mysterious “electric fluid.” Among the scientists of the Enlightenment they inspired was Benjamin Franklin, whose 300th birthday we celebrate this year.
	The Dawn Redwood — A Living Fossil The tree in Peabody’s front yard — Metasquoia glyptostroboides — is a “living fossil” from China. These trees, thought to be extinct, were discovered in remote valleys in central China in the 1940s.
	Hina Matsuri: The Doll Festival On March third each year Japan celebrates Hina Matsuri, the Doll Festival. Clothed porcelain dolls from the Yale Peabody Museum’s anthropology collections are set out in this exhibit in a traditional display, as they would be in a Japanese home.
	Physics Before Relativity: Scientific Revolutions in the 19th Century One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein formulated his Theory of Special Relativity and revolutionized 20th century physics. But even earlier physicists were discovering new phenomena that challenged the foundations of classical physics and set the stage for Einstein’s work.
	Form and Function A Tribute to Adolf Seilacher Dr. Adolf Seilacher, of Yale University and the University of Tübingen, has spent his career investigating form and function in fossils.
	Chinese New Year The Year of the Rooster—4703 in the Xia lunar calendar—began on February 9, 2005. Also known as the Spring Festival, the Chinese New Year is a time of reunion, relaxation and fun
	17th Century Lacquered Japanese Food Bowl For more than a century the Ainu had collected Japanese lacquer as they bartered for fish, seaweed and animal pelts with Japanese traders. In 1964 Yale University received a vast quantity of manuscripts, photographs and 3-dimensional objects from Millicent Todd Bingham.
	Detecting Cultures This exhibition treats one small part of one excavation among many conducted by Professor Irving (Ben) Rouse to reconstruct the prehistory of the Caribbean, where he has done so much groundbreaking work.
	G. Evelyn Hutchinson: The “Father”of American Ecology The year 2003 marked the centenary of the birth of G. Evelyn Hutchinson, a beloved professor at Yale and one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century.
	Digging for Meaning; Rocks, Gems and the Yale Seal The Yale University seal with its well-known Latin Lux et Veritas — “light and truth” — banner has been in regular use since 1736. The Hebrew phrase at the center of the seal has its origins in the time of Moses.

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