Picturing at the Peabody: Museum specimens ignite creative inspiration

Last fall, the Yale Peabody Museum had a surplus of cigar boxes — dozens of them. It’s not that folks there were lighting up stogies left and right, though. The boxes had served a scientific purpose: Entomologists historically used them to transport insect specimens to New Haven. After years in storage, they were once again put to good use. 

A few boxes were set aside for the museum’s archives while others were offered to a group of Yale undergraduates enrolled in “Picturing at the Peabody,” a photography course that encouraged students to seek artistic inspiration within the nearly 15 million objects that compose the museum’s collections. 

The course, a collaboration between the Peabody and Yale School of Art, granted students the creative freedom to explore the museum’s collections and produce lens-based artwork relating to what they discovered. 

The pieces are featured in an exhibit, “Of All Wild Things,” now on view in the museum’s student exhibition gallery.   

Students drew inspiration from bird and butterfly specimens, rod puppets from West Java, and marine fossils, among other objects. For Cynthia Lin, a Yale junior, the cigar boxes ignited a creative spark. 

“The boxes caught my attention, particularly how they were used to transport specimens back home,” said Lin, who is majoring in film and media studies. “I was drawn to this little diaspora, this in-betweenness, and this journey across borders that these specimens underwent before arriving at the Peabody. They are also visually beautiful.”

For her piece, Lin incorporated cigar boxes and photos of insect specimens from southern China into a sculpture that imagines a submerged museum case discovered 100 years in the future. Within the rectangular and transparent sculpture, the insects appear to rest atop the boxes that had been used to transport them from the field.

“Using Noah’s Ark as an allegory for museum collections, the work examines how preservation practices, through their anti-life chemicals and processes, transform into acts of mourning that mirror the displacement inherent to diaspora,” she said. 

The new exhibit is an exciting conclusion to a successful collaboration between the young artists and the museum, said Lisa Kereszi, a photographer and senior critic at the Yale School of Art who taught the class.

“The show really came together well,” Kereszi said. “The students and museum staff did a great job. And I love that thousands of kids are coming through there and seeing the students’ work. It is amazing to be a young artist and have a piece in a group show at a major museum.” 

Opening drawers

For years, Kereszi has brought her photography students to Horse Island, a 14-acre Yale property, managed by the Peabody, in the Thimble Islands off the coast of Branford, Connecticut, to explore and make photos. Like parents across the region, she has enjoyed visiting the Peabody with her daughter. She welcomed the opportunity to collaborate on a class that took students behind the scenes, into the museum’s back rooms, where the collections are housed, studied, and maintained. 

“I knew the students would love digging around in the collections,” she said. “You start opening drawers and you never know what you’ll find in them.” 

For the Peabody, the class was an opportunity for undergraduates to engage with the museum, said Sydney Muchnik, the museum’s academic coordinator.

“We have been building a relationship with the School of Art and the course was the next step in cementing that collaboration,” Muchnik said. “A connection between a natural history and human culture museum and art students might not be obvious. But the course demonstrates how working in a museum setting can inspire students and enrich their artistic practices.”

The dozen students in the class had latitude to investigate any theme, subject, or collection related to the Peabody that captured their attention. 

“Whatever they wanted to do was fine with me, whether it was documenting the museum behind the scenes or something very personal relating to their background or ancestry,” Kereszi said. 

Students began by searching the collection using LUX, a digital research platform that allows users to search across Yale’s collections. They were also invited into the museum’s collection storage facilities where they encountered all manner of specimens and artifacts. After selecting an object for the focus of their work, they conducted research on it and made presentations to the class. 

The students had access to the Peabody’s state-of-art imaging and recording studio. And Andy Todd, the studio’s manager, taught them to use the studio’s cameras, lighting, and other equipment. 

“It was a really cool experience because, in addition to learning about the Peabody and its collections, the students had the opportunity to learn about photographing natural history objects and different ways to approach that work from a studio perspective,” Todd said. “They quickly felt comfortable within the space and made some amazing pictures — things that I never would have thought to photograph.”

The students then worked with the museum staff to plan the exhibit. They collaborated on how their work would be displayed and drafted label text for each piece as well as the show’s title and introductory text. 

‘Of All Wild Things’

The creative works on view consider how museums displace objects, such as animal specimens, in time and space, recontextualizing them in an institutional setting, according to the exhibit’s introductory text, which the students helped to draft. 

“Sting,” by Alexa Druyanoff, a junior, depicts two marine fossils — Heliobatis radians, an extinct stingray, and Knightia alta, an extinct fish — on display in the museum. Druyanoff created a digital drawing of water, which she projected onto the fossils in the gallery. Then she photographed the fossils and the projected backdrop of shimmering water. 

“It’s dynamic,” Todd said. “People have really responded to it.”

In a photograph by junior Koby Chen, a woman sits on the floor of a white room between two opened cabinets that are lined with drawers. Her head is bowed; her right arm hugs her right knee. Her left hand clasps her right ankle. The bottom three drawers on either side of her are open — staggered like steps — revealing duck specimens stored inside them. A specimen of a Western Reef Heron, a bird species found in southern Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia, lies on the floor in front of her. The piece is untitled. There is no label text accompanying it.

“I think people will have varied and differing interpretations and reactions to any piece of art, and I don’t want to interfere with their immediate, visceral reactions. Hence, I don’t have a label description,” said Chen, who is double majoring in the history of art and race, ethnicity, and migration. “If I had to elaborate, my intention behind the image was to capture the coldness of the Vertebrate Zoology storage room — the harsh, sterile lighting that was reminiscent of a hospital, the endless rows of drawers that held thousands of animals… the room is temperature and humidity-controlled; every surface was always a bit chill to the touch.”

Three Wayang Golek puppets — traditional Indonesian rod puppets from West Java — are arrayed side by side in a photograph by Nydia del Carmen, a junior majoring in film and media studies. Light encircles each puppet against a black background. A filmmaker, del Carmen initially was concerned that a still image would drain puppets of their life. 

“Yet, as I worked through the process, it felt as though they animated themselves — demanding to retain their vitality,” she said. “Looking at the final photograph, I can’t help but feel that the puppets are more alive than ever. It was a strange, uncanny experience for me, and I still don’t know what to make of the photograph.”

Lin’s sculpture is mounted on a pedestal. It asks visitors to contemplate challenging issues associated with the collection, preservation, and display of museum specimens. 

“I wanted visitors to think about the very existence of museums like the Peabody, how specimens and knowledge are preserved for the future,” said Lin, who also is a filmmaker. “The grief inherent to displacement and diaspora. The inconsistencies of memory. The anti-life processes of preservation, which many of my classmates also reacted to — for instance, the sterility of some collection spaces.” 

Students expressed gratitude to the Peabody and to their instructors for providing them the opportunity to stretch their imaginations. 

“The course was such a joy — one of the true highlights of my time at Yale,” del Carmen said.  “It was an incredible honor to work so closely with the artifacts in the Peabody’s collection. I loved learning how to use the imaging lab with Andy and getting an inside look at the museum’s behind-the-scenes operations… But most of all, I cherished the community that grew in our class, watching everyone’s work evolve from abstractions to prints and coming together to design an exhibit.”

Each student — and Peabody staff who supported the class — received a keepsake: a cigar box containing prints of the students’ work. One of the mementos was donated to the museum, preserving the students’ experience for posterity.

“So, everybody has a memento of this class and the work we did together,” Kereszi said. “It’s like a miniature version of the show in a cigar box.”