Article ID: CBB001421593

A Museum of Ideas: Evolution Education at the Yale Peabody Museum during the 1920s (2014)

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In 1925, just a few months after the infamous Scopes Trial, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut, opened its new building. Its creators, most notably director Richard Swann Lull, used the world-renowned fossil collections amassed by Othniel C. Marsh to lay out exhibits that explicitly illustrated the organic evolution of life. At the time, scientists had many different ideas on the mechanisms of evolution: many were very sceptical about Darwin's theory of natural selection. Lull and his colleagues, particularly Henry Fairfield Osborn of the American Museum of Natural History, used museum exhibits to illustrate their particular ideas about evolution to the public. Whether museum visitors absorbed these ideas is not established. However, the opening of the Peabody Museum received almost universal acclaim, indicating that in many states evolution was widely accepted and not necessarily seen as being at odds with religious beliefs. Keywords: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, museum evolution exhibits, evolution by natural selection, natural history museums in the early twentieth century, Richard Swann Lull, Henry Fairfield Osborn

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Authors & Contributors
Rainger, Ronald
Homchick, Julie
Haught, Brandon
Ceccarelli, David
Cameron, Marlena Briane
Yegge, John G.
Concepts
Evolution
Controversies and disputes
Museums
Science education and teaching
Science and religion
Paleontology
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
21st century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Wyoming (U.S.)
Netherlands
Florida (U.S.)
Institutions
American Museum of Natural History, New York
University of Wyoming
Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass.
Field Museum of Natural History
University of Nebraska
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