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
Mind/Matter
The Neuroscience of Perception, Attention, and Memory
Starting December 7, 2024
“Mind/Matter: The Neuroscience of Perception, Attention, and Memory” explores the wonders of human cognition by taking visitors on a journey through the historical and modern science of the brain.
The exhibit was created in partnership with faculty from the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale University.
The exhibit includes historical scientific drawings that have never been shown to the public before, magical illusions that challenge our perceptions of reality, interactive stations that make visitors reflect on memories old and new and displays to explore how recent advances in artificial intelligence challenge our sense of what it means to be human. Through a series of interactive exhibits, the curators bend our perception to reveal how our brain constructs our reality.
Of All Wild Things
A collaboration between the Yale School of Art and the Peabody Museum
Starting February 2025
What is natural? Who belongs here? In their desire to preserve, museums displace objects in time and space, recontextualizing them in an institutional setting. The creative works in this exhibition reveal a sense of strangeness evoked by this ‘de-naturing’.
This exhibition was developed by Yale undergraduates in the course “Picturing at the Peabody”, developed in partnership with the Yale School of Art. Students were invited to investigate a theme, subject, or collection related to the Peabody. At the Peabody and elsewhere, students learned about the history of photography and how the Peabody collections are studied, organized, and exhibited.
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.