The Peabody Museum is always evolving. We are committed to building a greater understanding of science, culture, and community, giving space to a wider range of collaborators and experts, and listening to our visitors. Each time you come back to the Peabody, expect to see something a little different - and be a part of that change yourself.
Permanent
Temporary
Past
Caribbean Indigenous Resistance / Resistencia indígena del Caribe ¡Taíno Vive!
An exhibition presented in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute
December 2025–June 2026
This bilingual exhibition brings to life the story of a people whom traditional scholarship once labeled as “extinct,” disproving the narrative through examining the history of resistance and survival in the Caribbean, and the current Taíno movement in the United States. Taíno culture has roots in Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, and other ancestral homes throughout the Caribbean.
By examining the history of the islands and the impact of Caribbean Indigenous knowledge throughout the world, the Peabody hopes to tell the story of the endurance and courage of these peoples. Visitors will learn about the Caribbean Indigenous survival journey through stories, contemporary crafts, musical instruments, and utilitarian objects. The exhibition explore the rich and enduring cultural legacies of the region, the value and impact of the culture’s knowledge on the world, and the complicated questions around heritage, ancestry, and race that emerge from Taíno identities today.
Centennial Exhibit: One Hundred years of Peabody Evolution
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the dedication and opening of the current Peabody building
March–May 2026
The Peabody Museum (est. 1876) was originally located in downtown New Haven. The current building opened 100 years ago with a public embrace of evolutionary biology, and during an era much different from ours today.
Developed around themes of our public embrace of evolutionary biology and our long-standing role in the production of scientific knowledge, it features four objects and specimens that were either collected or acquired by YPM in 1925, the year the building was dedicated. As with all our collections, each tells a story.
The exhibit also features a 3-minute montage of still and moving images from the 1920s and 1930s, projected onto the back wall. These film clips and images, including a photo of the December 29, 1925, dedication ceremony, depict the Peabody and its surroundings in the 1920s and 1930s. The Peabody was the first university natural history museum in the U.S. with a School Services department, providing educational experiences for local schoolchildren.
Spineless
A student exhibition curated by Karina Ascunce, PhD Candidate in Neuroscience and Caecilia Thuermer, PhD Candidate in Molecular Biology
Starting October 2025
Spineless: “1. having no spine or backbone; invertebrate. 2. ...weak and purposeless.” (Oxford English Dictionary). The two definitions of spineless, respectively literal and metaphorical, give context to the general connotations surrounding invertebrates and invertebrate research: “weak” and “purposeless”. However, invertebrates have allowed humans to make tremendous scientific strides, spanning environmental technologies and revolutions in medical research. Utilizing specimens from across the Peabody's collections, this exhibition highlights the historical, present, and future applications of invertebrate research, particularly in their role in the advancement of biological science and human health.
The Rocks Cry Out
An installation by Cameron Patricia Downey, MFA ‘26
Starting September 2025
What is the difference between a record and a life?
Sculptor Cameron Patricia Downey’s latest work brings together an array of found objects to question how we define who—or what—is a witness. Do these materials’ rich histories, touched by the actions of people or the Earth, imbue them with a kind of life? Inspired by the museum’s collections, Downey created this installation as the Yale Peabody Museum’s 2025 Summer Art Fellow, co-sponsored by the Yale School of Art.
About the Artist
Cameron Patricia Downey (b. 1998) is an anti-disciplinary artist born and raised in North Minneapolis, Minnesota whose work oscillates between photography, film, body, sculpture, curation and otherwise. The incidental, the precarious and the misremembered are central to these works which strive to archive, unfurl, make-altar-of and bring fantasy to the Blues of Black life and relation.
There Are No Horses on Horse Island
By Patricia Voulgaris
Starting April 2025
In her two-part display at the Yale Peabody Museum, There Are No Horses on Horse Island, Patricia Voulgaris explores the natural landscape and local history of Horse Island through photography and personal reflections. Her black and white images have an ethereal quality, and at first glance the contexts are hard to place.
Located in Branford, Connecticut, Horse Island is an environmentally protected area maintained by the Peabody Museum. Voulgaris spent a week there in a residency co-sponsored by the Peabody and the Yale School of Art. This residency is self-directed for an artist who is interested in living and creating in rugged terrain with camping living quarters.