Inspirational Geology - The Yale Peabody Museum
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[00:00:00]
Chris Bolhuis: Ah, Chris, you know what? I'm juiced, man. that was,
uh, That was a really fun conversation. And it, I, it went in a bunch of different directions that I didn't expect it. I'll be honest. And that was awesome.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's pretty much always the case. We never really know where things are going to go when, even when you and I [00:00:30] just
talked, but you know, you throw two other people in the mix with us. We've never done that before. You know, we've never had, it's always been you and I and one other person.
And, today we had two people on
Chris Bolhuis: yeah. So the backstory here is we had Dr. David Skelly, who's the director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. we also had Dr. Stefan Nicolescu, who is a curator in the meteoritics and mineral side of, of said museum of the Yale Peabody Museum.
And talk about passion. these [00:01:00] two just I don't know, they've got it in spades and clearly
love what they're doing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: passion is contagious and that's why this was an enjoyable conversation because both, David and Stefan, they, they come at, they have different jobs, David's the director and, and Stefan's the curator of, of the mineralogy and meteorics and rocks and stuff like that.
But, they both are so passionate about what they do and what they talk about. And, every bit of [00:01:30] thought that goes into how they're going to display the specimens in their museum. It's it's stuff that I've never really thought about before. especially when, when David said, you know, you go to museums and you get just blasted with this information they're answering questions that.
You never asked and they didn't want to do that with this experience. I thought that was a, for me, that was a takeaway,
this whole philosophy and, and very thoughtful approach to
their displays.
Chris Bolhuis: okay. So just a little, a bit of a backstory here. Dr. [00:02:00] David Skelly is a ecologist, faculty member, professor at Yale, professor of ecology, has been the director of the museum of the Peabody Museum 10 years has won all sorts of awards. massively successful individual at the research front on the teaching front, but relevant to this discussion was, directing the museum as the director of the Peabody has overseen fundraising in excess of 250 million.
That is an astonishing number. amount for a museum at a [00:02:30] university, even a world class university like Yale. I mean, that's astonishing. And then, Dr. Stefan Nikolescu has had this very interesting career path. He says he's had three different geology careers. He worked on scarns, then he worked on geochronology had some really interesting papers on, geochronology of scarns and various thermochronometers.
And now as a meteoritics and, and mineral curator at the museum, and clearly passionate about. All the types of minerals that they get to go around and collect and get on loans and [00:03:00] navigate and just, explore the beauty of. So these are two very accomplished, very passionate individuals. And Chris, I, I like you, that, that comment about museums kind of being in the way.
Inspirational rather than educational is a really that I'm going to have to stew on a bit because I think that that resonates a lot and I think
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Jesse, have you ever been to a, uh, a Japanese botanical garden before,
Chris Bolhuis: no, I have not.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: this reminded me a little bit
of, of that
Chris Bolhuis: I have. You know, I'll take that [00:03:30] back. I have and you are totally right. Botanical gardens do the same thing. Really, really well done. Botanical gardens do the same thing. You're, you're totally right. That is a great analogy. I hadn't, hadn't put that together, but you're totally right.
I get the same feeling about plants at a botanical, at a really well laid out botanical garden.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So
anyway, I, one of the thing, Jesse, before we jumped to this, interview here shortly is, Dr. Skelly, David referred to hell, Michigan. So I just want everybody to know that he's not ripping on Michigan. All right. There [00:04:00] is literally a
community in
Chris Bolhuis: a place. Yeah, there's a place that
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay. It's actually a
Chris Bolhuis: right. There's a place called
Dr. Jesse Reimink: to the place. He wasn't being derogatory.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, that's right. There's a place called Hell, Michigan. There's a place called China, Michigan as well. There's several strange names in the state of Michigan.
There's a place, Chris, in Pennsylvania called Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Bird
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, how fun is that? you know, our focus of the discussion is the Yale Peabody Museum. refer a lot to David Friend, [00:04:30] philanthropist, who's one of the sort of experiential people. mineral exhibits. There's a hall named for David Friend and that has recently been renovated. And, and kind of that strategy, that philosophy, of this sort of inspirational design has sort of permeated throughout the rest of the Peabody museum. And they just finished a big renovation. And so, I mean, it sounds like an exceptional place to go.
I, was on Yale's campus a while back now, but, uh, I didn't get a chance to go through the Peabody museum. And, I'm wishing I did, but I'm looking forward to a visit soon [00:05:00] because, sounds exceptional.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I wonder if it was even open when you were
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, it might not have been. I, I, of course, my terrible memory. I can't remember what year I was
there, but I know I didn't go into the Peabody Museum.
so anyway, Chris, what do you say? Let's get to the interview.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Let's do it.
Chris Bolhuis: Here we go.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: David and Stefan, thank you for joining us on planet geo and welcome. Glad to have you here.
Dr. David Skelly: Oh, great to be here.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: It is really a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well, this is gonna, it's gonna be a fun conversation. We have, well, three nerdy geologists and a [00:05:30] lone ecologist there. This'll be fun. And finally in the majority,
as
Chris Bolhuis: time. It's about time.
Dr. David Skelly: We're, we're used to it. Sure.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Sure.
I'm sure, um, so we, we kind of always ask this traditional opening question, which is like, how'd you get into what you're getting into?
But we're kind of centering our discussion here on you. You're both intimately affiliated with the LP body museum, which is going to center our conversation. So before we get into like, how you got into your respective fields, can you Can you give [00:06:00] us the origin story of the museum itself, maybe? I'd be curious.
Like, I noticed, David, the endowment for the museum, or the amount of money you've raised, that has been raised for the museum while you've been director is astonishing. So, like, how did this, whole enterprise kind of come to be
Dr. David Skelly: No, I'm happy to, to, relay a little bit?
of that. So in the middle of the 1800s at a lot of different, American colleges, there were no American universities. There was an aspiration to include. [00:06:30] This new thing that people were calling science into the curriculum. And, one of the great, scientists of, of 19th century Yale and a, and a great mineralogist was James Dwight Dana and Dana gave a talk at graduation in 1856, where he laid out a vision for Yale college to become the first American university.
And as part of that vision, science was going to have to be brought into the foreground, there were. jokes in the middle 1800s that you could have dropped [00:07:00] a Roman centurion from the first century into a Yale classroom and they would have known exactly what was going on down to the language being spoken and, and the material being
read. clearly that wasn't the future when people started being more future focused and Dana and Silliman, Benjamin Silliman, were two of the, the leaders. They were two of the very few scientists on the faculty. And to them, a museum was kind of like, what we think of today as a startup. It was a place where exciting new [00:07:30] developments were going to happen.
If we were going to do science, we needed evidence. Evidence was physical. It lived in collections. Stefan's in a good position to tell you a little bit about the antecedents to the museum. But the museum itself arrived 10 years after, Dana's speech. And it was through the agency of an undergraduate who was one of the Dana and Solomon students named O.
C. Marsh, who ended up becoming the first professor of paleontology and who happened to have an uncle named George Peabody. [00:08:00] Peabody was already preparing to give a gift. He had no children, no heirs, and so he's preparing to give a gift to Harvard and, and Marsh lobbied for Yale. Harvard already had the Museum of Comparative Zoology, so they used the money to create an anthropology museum.
Yale had nothing, and so we created a kind of a synoptic museum that covers. the whole waterfront, and that's where it came from and it's grown from there.
that was 1866.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: amazing And the first of many victories of Yale over Harvard right Is that the
Dr. David Skelly: [00:08:30] Not, not my place to
Dr. Jesse Reimink: okay.
Dr. David Skelly: but, you know, perhaps.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: enough Okay That's really amazing I like that Uh the Roman centurions or analogy that's I mean I I didn't learn that history of American education system you know So it's it's interesting to see that trajectory and still see it preserved as a museum that's active and growing and alive and well. And the museums as startups, that's. Not your typical view of museums, I think, right? We think of these as sort of places of artifacts and old stuff,
Dr. David Skelly: And very past focused? but [00:09:00] that's not how they were conceived at all. It was bringing evidence together in a new way and organizing it so we could make sense of it. and really, if you think about it, research museums like ours, that's exactly what they're doing today. that core function hasn't changed.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's totally true. I mean, so interesting. and what an amazing resource, I guess, to, to have all these collections and stuff. And you're sitting in front of some beautiful stuff in the background there that I'm assuming is, is, you know, part of the collection.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: what used to be the show and tell in the [00:09:30] division. I'm in the collection room and, uh, Uh, what's in my background, it has been pilfered because many of the specimens that were there are now on permanent display in the
Benjamin Silliman was the first professor of science, both at Yale and in the nation, he was a lawyer by trade. And he picked to teach chemistry and natural history because of the connection between the then president of [00:10:00] Yale College and the Silliman family. Dana and Marsh and other bright young people at that time came to Yale because it was the best school to learn geology and mineralogy thanks to Silliman.
specimen that Silliman acquired in 1805, the very beginning of his career in London, he visited, the UK, is what's considered specimen number one for the Peabody Collection [00:10:30] because now it is in the Peabody Collection and on display in our History of Mineralogy at Yale in the museum. And Dana eventually got another quality, he married one of Silliman's daughters, so he became son in law, and his son Edward Salisbury Dana continued the tradition of his father in publishing the sixth edition of A System of Mineralogy, or Dana's Mineralogy.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow. That's [00:11:00] an amazing history, uh, of, yeah the collections So what is mineral What is collection number one or item number one What is it actually
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: a very unassuming specimen of hematite from Cumbria. We don't know the precise locality.
something that you wouldn't look much at unless you don't pay attention to the label on it. So it's a paper label stuck to the specimen. In Silliman's hand, it says B. Silliman from F. Acum, 1805, [00:11:30] London, and then 1805 once again on it.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you
know the I think I have a hematite specimen as sample number one in my collection because Chris boy
took me on a field trip up to the upper peninsula of Michigan where hematite is very common and we're walking around these mine tail you know old old mine tailings where it's just specular hematite everywhere The
ground
is
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, it's amazing stuff.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And I think that you know it was a rainy day but the sun came out and big sunbeams landing on this hematite That's how I remember it at least And
uh So I have a big chunk of specular heide that was like
You [00:12:00] know I got in high school That was
one of I don't know if it was number one but it was maybe number two or three
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. It's such good stuff.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: hematite. It's
bulky, brown
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Gotcha Okay
Chris Bolhuis: All right. Well, David, I'm going to start with you, if that's all right. We ask all of our guests, the same question, but you're the odd person out here because you're not a geoscientist, but that's okay. Can you tell
us Like,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Thank you. [00:12:30]
Chris Bolhuis: you
tell us a little bit, like, Jesse and I have very personal stories about how we got into geoscience and what was that moment.
And it's a very personal, like important thing. What happened with you? What, what drove you down the road of becoming an ecologist?
Dr. David Skelly: Yeah. so on the fundamental level, I never remember making a decision in this direction. I just kind of was always outside. my mother, referred to me as feral when I was a kid, because I just [00:13:00] always wanted to be out in the woods. And that's where I kind of hung out to the point that to get me to come home for dinner, she hung a, uh, schoolhouse bell on the back of the house and the rule was that I had to go no farther than where I could hear that bell and when I heard it, I had to come running.
But other than that, I had pretty free range. She grew up out in the Midwest on a farm. So the idea of her Children just dissolving into the underbrush didn't really bother her. And now that I'm a parent, I marvel at but I, [00:13:30] I appreciate it as well, because that's where I became really comfortable and interested in trying to understand what this world was.
We didn't have iNaturalist back then. I had the golden book of dinosaurs and the, you know, all these other little field guides for kids. And, I actually got them. This sounds like a television commercial or something, but. I grew up in Connecticut and I went to the Peabody Museum as a very young kid.
And that's where I kind of asked most that you didn't have to grow out of this, that you could just kind of [00:14:00] doing it. And I became a dinosaur kid. My personal knowledge of dinosaurs peaked when I was around eight or nine. but eventually as happens, I think with a lot of dinosaur kids, it kind of bums you out that the stuff that you love is not there anymore.
And you just have to study the remains. And I was, I was too interested in living things. So I, I turned towards ecology. and ended up taking every, field biology and ecology course I could in, in college and, and then went straight [00:14:30] into grad school and really haven't looked back.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. What about the, what about the frog
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hold on, Chris. I have a question real quick before that you you went to university of Michigan for your PhD right
Dr. David Skelly: yep.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Did you uh spend a lot of summers up at the field station
Dr. David Skelly: I certainly spent time there, uh, and had friends who did all their research there, and it's, Douglas Lake is a spectacular place.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I grew up I uh my my dad was a lake biologist who worked on a bunch of lakes up in Michigan for the summers He was a high school teacher but then he did his master's He got his [00:15:00] master's at by doing field work at the field station So he was like a TA
for the couple of the classes up there And we live there have very distinctive memories of living in those cabins and swimming in the beach there And like you know eating lunch in the big dining hall the mess hall there It's just an amazing resource that the
of
Michigan. Yeah uh anyway uh yeah
good, good
Dr. David Skelly: Well, it definitely, and, the place where I worked, I don't know if the magic coefficient is quite as high, but it was a lot closer. Uh, so in Pinckney, Michigan, [00:15:30] which has the distinction of being right next to hell,
Michigan,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay.
Dr. David Skelly: um,
Chris Bolhuis: that's right
Dr. David Skelly: There's a 1, 400 acre preserve called the E. S. George Reserve, and I did all my work there.
Back in the 60s and 70s, a couple of amphibian biologists named Henry Wilbur and Jim Collins had documented who was living there. And by the time I got there in the late 80s, that was old data, and nobody had ever really
looked at long term dynamics. But how I got into frogs is pretty interesting. I grew up, [00:16:00] transitioned from the dinosaur thing and I got really into fish and fishing and all that.
And I went to Michigan to work with a very well known fish ecologist named Earl Werner. and in the time between I was, accepted and when, I got there, he went through a divorce and I don't know whether it was a midlife thing, but definitely ecologists when they go through traumatic life experiences sometimes change their field
system. And he switched to frogs. I rolled with it and just kept rolling
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, yeah
[00:16:30] whatever, yeah
transitioning out of the Tadpole stage That's
super interesting, so how, okay well how does the ecology I mean it's so amazing that you, went to the Peabody Museum as a kid you kind
of wake
up sometimes and you're like it's amazing I'm the director of this thing Is it
Dr. David Skelly: yeah
And, and having kids whose interests align really helps both of our boys and we're not. My wife and I are not people to go, you've got to do what we do, but they certainly had lots of opportunity to see all of that. And my older [00:17:00] son, even, before I started as director of the Peabody 10 years ago, he was already super into dinosaurs.
And I was actually sitting on a Sunday morning, believe it or not. that's
when they called me to ask me to become the director of the Peabody. Which makes me kind of wonder whether I was their first choice. But
anyway, um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah
Dr. David Skelly: I get this phone call And
my son, who at the time, would have been seven or eight, he's sitting next to me and
I get off the phone.
He goes, Daddy, what was that about? [00:17:30] I said, well, guy from the provost office just asked me if I wanted to be director of the Peabody. And he looked at me, said, I would totally do that.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and
Dr. David Skelly: just to the, the, yeah, to put the cherry on that, he just started as a freshman at Yale and he's going to study paleontology.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: totally
cool. Okay. So he did not grow the dinosaurs.
Dr. David Skelly: He, he did not. He did not. He's perfectly happy with the dead stuff.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: There we go
That's awesome.
Chris Bolhuis: And, and David, you're so right. you just can't tell your [00:18:00] kids the direction they should go. I tried. And, uh, my kids, they don't even listen to my podcast. Yeah. They're so far away from geo. They have no interest in geoscience at all. You
know, it's,
Dr. David Skelly: my, older you know, ecology to him is like super duper boring, but, you know, going and sitting there with a little brush or air scribe doing whatever they do over these things for days at a time. He's like, that is, now that's
interesting.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's cool. Yeah.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey, it's astonishes me that people like paleontology too but you know Hey it's cool with [00:18:30] dinosaurs and stuff
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: Yeah, may I just ask Dave a question? So your son that is going for paleontology. the sun that you had out in the field at one stage with a coprolite stuck to his tongue?
Dr. David Skelly: that's actually his younger brother. Um, and that was about as into paleontology as he ever got. so we traveled when the boys were quite young. We traveled out to North Dakota and the boys got to go into the field with a, a former, Ph. D. [00:19:00] from, Stefan's department, named Tyler Leeson, who's now the curator
uh,
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah.
Yeah. He's, He's, like the child
Dr. David Skelly: uh,
Chris Bolhuis: out there.
Dr. David Skelly: Oh my god, he's amazing
Absolutely. Yeah. So he's at the Denver Museum. And so we spent three days there, shadowing him. We did the great
American driving vacation boys when they were young. And, we spent three days in Marmoth in North Dakota. So, Tyler had invited us and my younger son just about died from heat prostration because it was like [00:19:30] a hundred and four.
My older son, Aiden, who's the Paleo guy. he was just in, he's beside himself. He wasn't even touching the ground. He was just so excited to be there and he stuck to Tyler's heel the entire time and Tyler, is very fit person. He prides himself on his fitness, and if you've ever been in the Badlands out there, it is this highly dissected terrain where, to me, the shortest way to get from A to [00:20:00] B might be going around this, not Tyler, man, it's like beeline right through it and Tyler stuck to him and he was the only one who could keep up with him and after three days of this and, Aiden found a thesilosaur and whatever, and he had this, epiphany about field paleontology, he and, Tyler got back to the trucks at least five minutes before the rest of us and, Tyler turned to him and said, You know, you grow up a little, you can come out and work for me.
And I don't think Tyler [00:20:30] does that all the time. and so by the time I got up there, he turned to me and he goes, daddy, I just got a job offer. And he was 11 the time.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's
Dr. David Skelly: and, you know, there's a lot of ground you cover between the time you're 11 he never wavered and Aidan has been working for Tyler for the last three summers,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No that's
amazing. That's amazing. I
mean, it's great that passion you
know sort of doesn't go away right And it it sometimes takes that passion for it to not feel like work so that you work hard at it it's [00:21:00] just such an important thing And I think a lot of Scientists in the natural sciences kind of have that in some way shape or form that eight o'clock at night it doesn't feel like work to
be thinking for me about continent formation
You know this is like
fun
So
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, David, does, does your son work on the corral bluffs thing that Tyler has going on
Dr. David Skelly: Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I yeah, so he, he is certainly aware of that and some of the, he divides his summer every year where the, beginning and end of his time out [00:21:30] there, he'll go out for six weeks and at the beginning, he's in Denver and they're doing fossil prep and moving stuff around.
Then they head up to Marmoth and they're in the field and doing whatever they're doing. And then they come back. And so on those shoulders, he might be prepping or moving stuff, but stuff that he has worked on has mostly come from the greater Marmoth region, either, right there in North Dakota, South Dakota, or, or Montana.
two summers ago. I don't know if you all have heard about, there's a new film. IMAX film that came out called, T [00:22:00] Rex.
And that's Tyler On air being filmed by an IMAX crew, figuring out that this hadrosaur that they thought they had found was actually a T Rex.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No kidding
Dr. David Skelly: He figured on camera, uh, yeah, it was fantastic.
Aiden was on that crew. And so, the summer of whatever it was, 2023, he came back and he told me all this stuff that had gone down and that, you know, they'd found a T Rex. He got to excavate it. It all happened on camera and I told him you should probably quit [00:22:30] because you just peaked.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it. Yeah.
Dr. David Skelly: it
Dr. Jesse Reimink: to go up from there Yeah No
kidding.
Dr. David Skelly: he's not worried about that. I'm glad but um, but the film's really great.
You should check it out We're gonna it here and have Tyler come and do like a Q& A after the the screening
Dr. Jesse Reimink: very cool.
Dr. David Skelly: well
Chris Bolhuis: All right.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh that's interesting. I'll have to check
Chris Bolhuis: That's amazing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris Have you of
Dr. David Skelly: It's actually premiering at the American or No, Smithsonian right
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh right
Okay.
Oh, cool. Yeah Excellent
Stefan your origin story as a [00:23:00] geologist get to go second but first in our hearts because you're a geologist
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: yeah, it was a combination of several factors. First was reading one of Arun Tatsiev's books on volcanoes, something translated it will be, Close encounters with the devil or something like that
photos of volcanoes. So that caught my attention. And I was feral in a different way, than David, but I
spending my [00:23:30] summers at least two weeks, if not a whole month, hiking in the Carpathians with, all the provisions on my back, uh, living out of a tent and washing in, uh, ice cold, Creeks up in the mountains. And I just started wondering why are there's glacial cirques here and why Transylvania is just much flatter and lower area.
And
the thing that nailed it for me, was actually When I decided to go to [00:24:00] college in, uh, one area of southwestern Romania where my family is originating from the ancestors were mining the ore
I came across, uh, some, uh, Impressive, well formed garnets in marble in a scarn deposit.
nailed it for me that I
I ended up doing my PhD on the same thing. And the rest is history.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. That's what kind of garnets were they
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: [00:24:30] were Androdites, so Androdite,
so Ugrandite but obviously no Urarovite there, it's one of the deposits that was recognized back in the 1800s as being scann came later. But the, the funny thing is that I did my PhD on those scorns in the country of origin for the word scann,
which
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I didn't know
that. Okay. That's cool
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: s scann [00:25:00] means actually prostitute it was
the from. Iron deposits in central Sweden.
The useless material. And that was, and this is something that not even the Swedes know, I presented this at the Department of Geology in Gothenburg, and I got the same reaction that I got from you. Laughter. You know, they were not
the etymology of the
SCAR. So I[00:25:30]
field.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, that is amazing I mean scarns are beautiful And we Chris and I have gone collecting a bunch of rocks around the United States together not recently but there's a scarn deposit in upstate New York right Chris I think where we had the the
beautiful cinnamon colored. Was it Maine Okay
The cinnamon colored garnets I can
never remember which compositions of garnets give different which colors
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: if it is cinnamon
Chris Bolhuis: It was Grosseler. Oh,
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: I
dominated. There is no very seldom [00:26:00] you find end member, compositions in the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay that's usually and then you got into into thermochronology for quite a while too And and some uh
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: my first life in geology was, uh, trace element, geochemistry.
then I got into ther chronology in helium dating. then my third life in geology is at the Peabody Museum.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow
Moving up in the world or down in the moving up in the world probably Although geochronology is that's gotta be a high point doing geochronology
Chris Bolhuis: geez.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: [00:26:30] it metamorphosis in the field of geology is complete now
exhibit.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay That's
perfect Uh okay so on that
note on the museum we were reading uh we kind of read up on the museum and there's a quote that I found interesting from David Friend who I think donated a a bunch of material right initially to the museum and the quote was struck my eye in that he said He wants people to kind of be [00:27:00] inspired rather than learn or something along those lines the quote here is there's a minimum of descriptive labeling I want visitors to leave this hall overwhelmed by the beauty of what they've seen and anxious to go home and learn more So that's very different from most museums where you know you you're
there to kind of learn
rather than be inspired So how
has that worked
and how has that. I don't know bled into the greater museum culture there I guess
Dr. David Skelly: Yeah, um,
Chris Bolhuis: on one second, David, before you answer that? Because I just has this always been [00:27:30] a part of Peabody Museum philosophy since its inception? Or is this more you,
Dr. David Skelly: Yeah. so I guess what I would say is that David and I, are very much kindred spirits on this, when I first met Dave right around the time that I became director about 10 years ago, and, He had tried to create gallery like this at Harvard at the Geological Museum, and long story short, he couldn't quite get there.
And so he came to [00:28:00] us a little bit, you know, kind of peeved and not very optimistic that it would be any different at Yale. But the early conversations that we had, I completely agreed with him that, what we're doing as much as anything else, and I draw on my own experience here, is, engaging people's curiosity first.
So, if you think about the doors that somebody who doesn't know anything about something can walk through, and one of them [00:28:30] is this world of, beauty and diversity and interest, and the other one is, well placed, specimens with lots of text around them, most people will walk through that first door first.
and that happens even if it isn't intentional, almost universally with, like, dinosaur exhibits, because the dinosaurs, at least, can be a lot bigger than the signs. And when you walk under the neck of our brontosaurus, you're not thinking about the signs. But if you go into [00:29:00] almost any mineralogy exhibit, the signs are in the foreground.
we have helpfully arranged calcites over here and sulfites over here, and minerals that come from hydrothermal vents over there. and, you know, the way I think about it is, it's answering a bunch of questions that I didn't ask. And it doesn't mean that it's not interesting, or can't be interesting, but it's sort of Like here, and most people are coming in here, and what we have noticed, and, [00:29:30] Stefan will probably agree, we need to do more to really? quantify this and come up with solid estimates, but my impression, which is self serving, is that, we have those exhibits that explain the origination of minerals.
You know, we have a genetic mineral display, we have local minerals from Connecticut, we're talking about the history of mineralogy at Yale, and these are all exhibits that Stefan and our curator in charge, Jay Agnew, have worked very hard on. But next door, in David [00:30:00] Friend Hall, and we've got an annex next to that, and select pieces elsewhere in those spaces.
There is very little signage, not none, but mostly just tombstone labels explaining this is what this is.
And you watch people go sit in David Friend Hall and watch people come in, and literally, if they haven't been in before, their jaws drop. You know, it just, you're giving them this moment where they carry their expectations into that space.
And you have confronted them with a [00:30:30] reality that exceeds or is vastly different than what they would have imagined. the provost at the time we opened David Friend Hall for the first time in 2016, I invited him to the opening, we were gonna have a ribbon cutting with David and everything, and he looked at me and goes, Just to be clear, this is rocks? And, and I said, listen, Ben, come early, come 10 minutes early. I'll walk you through the space. If you want to turn around and go right back out the back door and not be there, fine. And I had him in the [00:31:00] room for five minutes and he's like, okay, I get it. This is awesome. and what we're seeing, the part of it that we need to quantify better is I think we get.
more traction. I think those exhibits talking about the genetic origin of minerals, I think they're stickier now than they were before, we had this, this other space. So we put more in there. And I think people are spending a lot more time in that part of the museum. And all you've got to do, if you don't believe me, is go take a look at the Google or Yelp reviews.
And we opened that [00:31:30] hall, in 2016. If you go back before that, it's all dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs. After that, it's dinosaurs and minerals.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the inference there
I just want to understand it clearly You're saying that because you have this David friend hall that's very
stunningly beautiful
I mean it's emotionally driven You're saying you're getting a lot more traction on the kind of more learning centric side of the
Dr. David Skelly: I may be being self serving, but I think that that's, true. and it's definitely true, like our exhibit designer, Laura Friedman, was [00:32:00] responsible for the two generations of of display. had a donor engaged for the second round of it who also contributed a lot of thinking for what went where.
But basically, the driver of what you see and and some of the juxtapositions and so on was that those were aesthetically driven as as anything else.
I mean, we definitely have, tourmalines over here and so on, but it's, it's not, like, ordered. not orderly. it's just mind blowing.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So
Chris, do you have a question? I [00:32:30] have so many
Chris Bolhuis: I do, um, I do too, David and Stefan, you can feel free to jump in on this as well, but it's interesting what you said that a lot of times when you go to a, an exhibit like this, there's information that's answering questions that weren't asked. So what are you providing? that everyone wants to know.
I find myself thinking if I were to walk into this, I've, I've looked at the gallery photos online and so on, and it's, it's shocking. what would I want to know? So what, what did you guys arrive at? What is the information [00:33:00] provided?
Dr. David Skelly: Well, go, go ahead,
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: So it's the specimen, the mineral species name, the locality information, if it is, Loan, as we have most of the specimens in the David Friend Hall in the Annex are on extended loan, five years,
the name of the, the lender, yeah, you wanted to say something, David?
Dr. David Skelly: Uh,
just
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: wanted to say
Dr. David Skelly: I think the question is Yeah, I think the question is, in the space outside David Friend Hall, what questions are we answering [00:33:30] there? What do we think people want to, to know? if we have, kind of provoked their curiosity inside David Friend Hall, in the annex, in the gem space, and so on, What are we then prepared to help people understand?
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: so What we have outside of, the David Trenthall is, regional mineralogy, the regional being only Connecticut, so mineral specimens from Connecticut, with a little bit of explanation about the [00:34:00] geological variety of Connecticut, but not much. I'm a museum consumer as well, and I know that don't have the and stamina to read lots of text.
But this
of the exhibit design group, and I agreed with it. And then we have three, four cases that are loosely genetic. So we have surficial minerals, we have hydrothermal, magmatic, and metamorphic.[00:34:30]
with a very short paragraph about how those minerals form. And we selected also aesthetic minerals to illustrate the different where minerals form. then what we have now, also thanks to Friend, he, a couple of years ago, started a new endeavor and developed an app which has Short clips, attached [00:35:00] to display cases speaking about certain minerals. Many
were done by our exhibit with, very short, fun clips. videos, you know, 30 seconds, 40 seconds. And about a month ago, we started doing them with me as well. And I'm going more into the descriptive, the genetic and so on, but also very short.
QR codes. You scan them [00:35:30] on your phone
can watch them there or watch them later.
But
A little bit of additional information, besides that very minimalistic Spartan explanation with name and locality.
Dr. David Skelly: what I would add there, backing out since I'm not a geologist, is that the questions that I hear from people when they see this is like, what is this? Where does it come from? How is it made? And so I think the displays do a nice job of doing [00:36:00] that. And also I really like having the local minerals there because that gives people a way.
If they want to find out more, it's sort of like, if you're going to learn about birds, well, what birds can I go see outside in my yard? A lot of people will come into the museum. And of course, they're going to not going to know that they can go find minerals themselves
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. I I mean I think there's so there's so many aspects to this that again I'm I'm ignorant about museum high level museum thinking but it seems obvious that that the local stuff is really [00:36:30] important especially to get that across I mean in our little earth and mineral sciences museum you know we have a big model of the Drake well the first oil well ever drilled like sitting right there because it's like an hour and a half up the road it's such an important thing that speaks to the history of the place you're kind of standing on I have a question about the This inspiration
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: Jesse, hold that thought,
the oil well drilled in Pennsylvania after Benjamin Silliman Jr. cracked crude oil for the first time,[00:37:00]
it can be used for illumination, because until then, it was the decimation of the whale population for whale oil,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah
I uh
I learned that statistic I mean Yale is really integral to this entire history the chemist and the the the overlap of chemistry geology and I don't know whatever the scholarly science there was that you could be a jack of all trades back then But the book by Richard Rhodes on the history of energy is just astonishing The science of all that is just amazing uh leading [00:37:30] up to that So it's such a cool story yeah that's it's great
so okay The question was about about the sort of inspiration you have these these halls for that are information light that must be really dependent upon spectacular specimens or even large specimens maybe like do you have to have a massive it's a Stibnite or something that is in this do you have to have like a a physically imposing specimen to do this with or can you do it with something with lighting and you know something really high quality and [00:38:00] smaller How do you think about this I'm guessing sample number one some crappy hematite is not like
What you're going to base this on, but maybe I'm wrong
Dr. David Skelly: Well, so what I would say is that the key is probably variety. but definitely, we grabbed onto the idea that we had to have large anchor pieces, we work very closely.
like huge, like tons, you know, and so we've got, spectacular, calcite, and we've got a, a desert rose of selenite [00:38:30] bigger than, ever imagined, and that does two things.
One is you don't have to know anything about minerals to go, that is wild. What is
that? Right?
Um, and draws you,
yeah, and, yep, and, and it, it also works spatially, just in a, in a geographic sense. You know, we've got this Namibian quartz crystal inside the door to David Friend Hall, and from the top of the stairs when you come up to the third floor, that sucks you right into that room.
because you can [00:39:00] see it from far away. So the big pieces definitely matter. And we worked with a, a lender, a guy named Barry Yampol, who unfortunately passed away. And, much of what you'll see on display there is on loan from now his family. and Barry loved to refer to those really
big pieces as, decorator pieces.
So that tells you what he thought about them. And I think a lot of hardcore mineral people have similar sort of idea about it. But I don't think he argued that they were effective, especially [00:39:30] for people who were not familiar with mineralogy. exception being that I think sometimes, that stibnite or the selenite, Even the most jaded hardcore person is like, Oh, my lord, I've never seen something that big or we've got, this, uh, tourmaline called the red rocket.
has been, hidden and out of view. And we had, the curator from the Harvard Museum and she walked in and saw it and she said, I've only ever seen photos, you know. So, so these are [00:40:00] things that have resonance. However, what you also said, like small things, can work really well. I think what we learned is that, really outstanding theatrical style lighting is absolutely critical.
And the lesson that we learned in David Friend Hall, lighting that for the first time, we carried throughout the whole museum and it
was, was, incredibly expensive for me as the fundraiser because that, that lighting is like through the [00:40:30] roof. But you can even take probably the most individually boring not much to look at sort of things we have in the whole museum where it's the content of it that's interesting are cuneiform clay tablets.
They're just little blobs of clay with little marks on you have to get people excited about what they are, but you can actually, if you light it right, you can get people to understand, Oh that's special. That's special. I better go look at that. And in fact, what they look at is some kid's homework from [00:41:00] 4, 000 years ago where he's calculating the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle, and then you learn that that was 1, 200 years before Pythagoras lived.
And, you know, it's just something like that where Just a little blob of clay can take you someplace you didn't expect
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh that's really interesting that you you kind of I'm guessing you can't you kind of set it up in the room with the lighting such that it kind of just draws people into it
Dr. David Skelly: A hundred percent. and, and the minerals are much easier because these things, I mean, they have gem like [00:41:30] quality, right? if you get the light on them just right, and we have wonderful people we've worked with on this front, room actually just glows. There's almost no ambient light in the room.
All the light that you're really navigating the room with is, is reflecting off the specimens.
It's, it, it's, the room feels special. It feels like someplace where people really care about these things. And then we've carried that into, you know, the displays that, Stefan was, was talking about where it could [00:42:00] be local geology and, some of the specimens are not, sort of like the hematite specimen you're talking about, but you can make them feel special.
If you treat them like they're special.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's really
interesting. Do
Chris Bolhuis: interesting,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: uh sorry Yeah. Go ahead, Chris.
Chris Bolhuis: Stefan, I think this is a question that's geared more to you, but can you talk about how acquisition happens? what does that process look like? You know, I know that you, you got a lot on loan from David friend. is that pretty much, you know, how it works?
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: [00:42:30] from big collectors, like now the Yampol family, the first iteration of the David
had loans from 17 different collectors and
actually would like very much to showcase on, loans on, uh, Two year loans, for instance, specimens from other museums. But for growing our collection, the [00:43:00] Yale Peabody Museum Mineralogy and Meteoritics Collection, are relying mostly on donations. We had some wonderful donations coming in just in the last year. a few of the specimens in those donations are already on display. That was a little bit, hard to get.
to, coordinate because we had everything already planned out, decided this goes there, that goes there, and then these amazing things come in, and I said [00:43:30] we cannot not to have this on display.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: of the team comes in, and we put them on display and they are fantastic. We have
modest acquisition.
Budget. And over the years, I developed relationships with different trustworthy, mineral dealers, and, they know That I, and for the museum, I like unusual, odd [00:44:00] things. So, for instance, we have recently acquired a specimen that shows a little bug of dark blue azurite. Crystals, azurite we saw before, but these are twinned azurites.
How
you come across twinned azurites?
another thing we have also from a recent donation. So the azurite was purchased with funds from our acquisition fund. [00:44:30] But just six months ago, we got a donation. with a 25. 5 cm V twined crystal barrel crystal from
How can you not put that on display?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah Uh beautiful
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: on steroids.
donations, we are lucky when we get good donations, and I am, uh, looking for specimens that I know will work well on display and with the [00:45:00] public. We
of these, and we have legacy specimens. So we have a couple of huge Ichinokawa stibnites. Ichinokawa is this famous stibnite mine, was a famous stibnite mine in Japan on Kyushu, and it was actually intermittently, only during war periods, because
was used in, manufacturing, I don't know, in ammunition or something.
isn't [00:45:30] anything coming out of there anymore, but when these specimens came, to Yale, I think they were purchased.
I'm not sure. We don't have a record for that.
But when came in,
Dr. David Skelly: Dana?
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: exactly, that's where I'm going.
Dr. David Skelly: Oh, sorry. just up.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: And a younger
Edward Salisbury Dana, Silliman's grandson. felt compelled to do a crystallographic study on these largest specimens. We have a total of about 20 [00:46:00] specimens from Ichinokawa, but on these two largest specimens he was so impressed he did a, crystallographic study, and he published it in the American Journal of Science, which was established by his grandfather in 1818 and is the
continuously published journal in North America. The editorial office is above the room that I am here a little bit
to the the hallway. So it's in the same place [00:46:30] as it was since 1818.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow. That's very cool Very cool And Stibnite that's
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: specimens. We,
have, uh, specimens that came in from, George Gibbs, who was a Newport merchant, much more interested in natural history than in, uh, growing his business. That's how he ended up in
uh, giving Yale first refusal for the acquisition of his collection. And Benjamin
was critical in raising the funds for, uh, that [00:47:00] And it gives me goosebumps. Each time that I'm
one of those specimens, knowing that
them go back to the 1700s in France. The
I get when I look at the mural, The Age of Reptiles, painted by Rudy Zellinger in the 1840s, because even if I was schooled behind the Iron Curtain in my paleontology book in college, I had a reproduction of that painting. [00:47:30] Fresco. It is a fresco seco. It is how it was understood, the science of paleontology in the 1840s, uh, 1940s, so it is a little bit dated. I'm pinching myself each time. I cannot believe it that
of this institution
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's
amazing. I mean, you two have just like these these sort of such amazing threads to the museum and clearly such passion for it It's it's it's very [00:48:00] fun to listen to and to to talk to you guys about
on this sort of personal note, I want to ask you both the same question and maybe Stefan we'll start with you What is the best specimen Your well your favorite specimen in the collection and why I know this is an impossible question
but you know I got to ask it anyways
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: I know you know the answer to this because anybody who has children knows that you love your children the same way.
How specimens? So I [00:48:30] my
fascination
because it's such a, A repository of information.
that out does garnet is zircon, but zircon
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yes
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: when I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So I
have a real quick, sorry to interrupt you Steven but I
I was asked to write for nature geoscience. they have started doing these all minerals considered things which are like little short it's like 200 words or something you know them Okay So I was asked to write the one on Zircon And so you know I'm writing [00:49:00] this thing on Zircon I'm like trying to shorten down the vast amount of knowledge on Zircon out there into inspiring couple hundred
words. And basically I ended up in this this rabbit hole of trying to figure out is this the most valuable mineral for geoscientists Or is it Garnet
I actually couldn't convince myself that Zircon was more valuable than Garnet So I didn't put it in there
but it you know it's like clearly these two are just unbelievable archives for geoscientists and information So anyway
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: Absolutely.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: tangent about the difference between the two
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: [00:49:30] former geochronologist in me, zircon
an amazing, mineral for helium dating. The helium dating is basically the only dating, mineral dating method that can go from the beginning of the solar system to the eruption of the Vesuvius, provided that there is no resetting, that the system didn't get reheated because then the clock is reset.
I applied helium dating to garnet as well and got meaningful numbers
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh good Oh interesting Okay [00:50:00] Yeah Yeah
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: garnet, but there are these other specimens. Even specimens on loan from the Yampol family. I'm looking in awe at all the etched, aquamarines, so the burial variety aquamarine, which are etched, and I'm wondering is the environment, what is the solution that can just deconstruct a mineral without leaving anything [00:50:30] else behind it.
It's just fascinating.
specimens are also aesthetically arresting. They're unbelievably beautiful.
So
Dr. Jesse Reimink: cool. That's
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: Aquamarines. There is a garnet on display in the Connecticut case from New Haven, from
which is kind of like the Salisbury Rock in Edinburgh, where Benjamin Silliman got almost killed in 1805 when a big block, he was walking at the base of the, [00:51:00] the escarpment collecting minerals, and a big block came tumbling down.
In the time, he Managed to take shelter under another rock in his reminiscences. He says Haven't I been lucky enough to find that? Protection somebody else would have this story
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's amazing. All right, David. best It doesn't have to be a mineral, I guess. Or rock. It can be
Dr. David Skelly: Well, I'm sorry, but it's not going to be a mineral. I love I love our minerals. And [00:51:30] also betraying my association with my home division in the museum, which is vertebrate zoology. And I'm going to go with a dinosaur that was my favorite dinosaur when I was a kid. it's Stegosaurus. And we have then and now type specimen on the floor.
that was the first stegosaurus that was ever mounted. And, the sign when I was a kid talked about the fact that this animal had two brains. One in its head and one in its pelvis, because there was this area of [00:52:00] swelling, they interpreted at that point as, as a second brain. And it was some sort of stuff about how these animals are so big, so they need to have these multiple, um,
Cognitive centers to be able to react quickly didn't have anything about how that would be coordinated, right?
And it turns out it was utter garbage, but that stuck stegosaurus into a particular part of my brain and then there's just great about it. Stegosaurus means roof lizard, and that's because when Marsh found the [00:52:30] first specimen of Stegosaurus, they just found some leg bones and ribs and stuff, and then some of those plates, and Marsh interpreted this animal as sort of like a turtle, and those plates, instead of being erect like this, They were tiled shingles on the back and of course he was dead wrong and they found this other specimen within a year or two And Marsh was nothing if not resilient.
He's like, yep got it wrong published the new drawings And then that was one of the very early pieces of evidence that [00:53:00] these animals were having to protect themselves from big predators. Because they had these big tail spikes. And our old mount had the wrong number of tail spikes.
It was six instead of four. And then in the meantime, one of my favorite stories from any of the sciences we cover is that, all I'm sure will know about Gary Larson and farside cartoons. a farside cartoon where, somebody is giving, a sort of a eulogy, about dearly departed Thag who had gotten nailed by one of these tail spikes, um, from a [00:53:30] Stegosaurus, and then some paleontologists came along and officially named those tail spikes Thagomizers.
So That's
what they're called. So lots of stories and it's a, just a special, it's a set of memories. And think that's what museums do, right? that you develop a set of associations and you can remember, like I still to this day can remember the first time I walked under the neck of the brontosaurus, and you can just feel that.
Like I, grew up and I moved [00:54:00] away from Connecticut and I came back For a job interview many, many years later. And I was asked, well, what do you want to is there anything you want to go do or see while you're in New Haven? And I said, well, I'd love to go to the Peabody. And I wasn't being interviewed by the Peabody.
I was being interviewed by. Um, and so they brought me over there and I walked into that hall for the first time as really a mature adult, and the hair on the back of my neck went up, know, and I think we all have those associations, not always with the [00:54:30] museum, of course, but there are things in the world that have that kind of effect on us, and if, if you had to say, this is what a museum is for, if you're doing it right, you're, getting that to happen people. There's You
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so cool. I mean, yeah, that's
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: of a connection, between Stegosaurus and what we have in the David Friend Hall. I don't know if you remember this, Dave. when we got the big, desert rose, this is a humongous desert rose,
Chris Bolhuis: How big is it, by the way?
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: by five feet.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, [00:55:00] wow. Okay.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: are
Chris Bolhuis: wow.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: basement one of our former colleagues that was a paleontologist was there, Richard Kissel, and when Richard saw the plates which are literally foot in size,
plates of gypsum coming out there, all tangled, he said, Stegosaurus root kill. And that's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's
pretty good.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: in a plug here, [00:55:30] just, last Friday, a paper came out in the Mineralogical Record, I don't know if you are familiar with it, the journal, that, we wrote and we tell both the history of the mineralogy collections at Yale and then the latest developments under, uh,
So give you some good pictures and the story.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, that's very cool. Um we're running late here, Chris. What do you, what do you think? You want to wrap it up here with the last [00:56:00] question?
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, for sure.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, go ahead, Stefan.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: I have a question for Chris and you, because
that the way that the two of you started, in my mind, is very similar to the way that George Jarvis Brush, who was the first curator of mineralogy at the Peabody, got started in geology. He was at one point, he was 15 only at that stage, and he was in school in West, here in West Cromwell in Connecticut, [00:56:30] his teacher, a gentleman by the name Theodore Gold, inspired him into natural sciences, and especially in mineralogy. Wasn't something similar between Chris and you, Jesse?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, for me, I mean, my origin story in geology is, I was very, very focused by Chris, but I kind of started out in that my dad was a high school biology teacher and, had this very idyllic summers up and I don't know if we were quite feral, but [00:57:00] we were close to it, you know, especially for my generation, we were much more feral than your average millennial. but we were, you know, out collecting bugs in the, all, day in the summer, running around with bug nets and little cyanide jars, you know, just outside all the time. And, um, we were up in Michigan where there's this, on the, on the West side of Michigan, on the side of Lake Michigan, there's a lot of, uh, gravel, uh, shorelines.
So there's a lot of stones and you go look and collect stones and it's very, very beautiful. And I found a stone that was very interesting. I still have it. Uh, we just moved, [00:57:30] so it's not in my bookshelf behind me, but I have it, and it was like a very curious looking thing that my dad, the biologist, didn't know.
We brought it into the high school, and the earth science teacher didn't know how it formed, and that for me was like, oh, I found something that nobody Can explain this is amazing. and so that kind of, you know, sat on the shelf and festered a bit and I had a little rock collection and stuff, but then Chris was, I Ted Christian in ninth grade earth science, and that opened my eyes to mountains, which were a foreign thing to me in Michigan.
Like [00:58:00] the highest building I'd seen was like eight stories high at that point in time. Uh, and so it's just very flat country. So, mountains and, volcanoes and earthquakes. And then I, I was hooked. And so I took geology. Chris offers a, what is effectively a college level. Well, it is a college level geology class.
You can get college credit for, I did a field course that Chris taught, that went for three weeks out west. So yeah, I was very much inspired by, uh, Chris Bolhuis. Um, You know, to kind of pursue this, um, as a, as a career. So, yeah, I mean, it's the, it's the power of [00:58:30] like early exposure to stuff. I think, you know, it's a real exercise in early exposure to cool stuff and passionate people.
Uh, I think that's just kind of what makes the world around. So,
Dr. David Skelly: 100%.
Chris Bolhuis: So David, can you tell us what's been your best day in the museum?
Dr. David Skelly: I got to tell you, it's probably pretty recently. I mean, I've had lots of great days. I feel very fortunate in, what I get to do day in and day out. But, I've been director over a period of a decade, but over the last six or eight years, we were [00:59:00] planning, planning, planning, and then getting ready to build, and we were planning to close the museum in July of 2020.
As you can imagine, we didn't make it there. We closed in March, but we were fortunate in the sense that we were planning to close, so we had explored this new software called Zoom. And so we had kind of schooled ourselves up on doing remote programming and all that. And so that turned out to be sort of handy.
but everything about renovating a museum, doing a big [00:59:30] capital project, trying to keep donors engaged. It just made everything really challenging in a lot of ways, and, I have to say overall it brought out the best in people, and I would start with our staff, but everybody involved, our, our faculty curators, our donors, the administrators, people from facilities, our contractor, everybody just figured out how do you renovate a museum in the middle of a pandemic?
And we were the biggest project at Yale during those years. [01:00:00] And they were learning how to do that across the campus based on our project. And I'm, both really proud of that. And there were, there were great days in the middle of that, but really you know, we were coming. out of the pandemic as we were getting ready to open and finally finally getting to the days last March when we opened for the first time and the first 100 visitors to museum were New Haven school kids and just watching those kids come in and then the days following that just seeing people flooding in the [01:00:30] door.
and watching their reactions and seeing them have these moments that I remember from when I was, was a kid. That's definitely, definitely been the big highlight. and I don't know that I would have predicted that. I mean, I, I'm a scientist and so I, get really excited about the research we do and so on.
but, you know, I was raised, even if I didn't take the lesson on board, perhaps the way I should have, that people are a lot more important than anything else. And that's been true. It's just [01:01:00] been true. It's, you know, we, we built this place for audiences, both on and off campus, and seeing them really enjoying the space.
And not everything landed 100%, but a lot of it landed really well, the way we had hoped.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, that's very cool. I mean, and I don't know, David, I feel I love research. nothing gets me more excited. Then the research side and many of those aspects, but at the same token, the big class I teach, I teach 200, you know, future engineers, the basics of geoscience. [01:01:30] That's by far the most impactful thing that I'm doing.
And I'm sure you feel that way about the directorship. Like, you know, guiding this, this museum is massively impactful as far as an outreach thing. So, all right, Stefan, best day in the museum.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: So there are the days when we were coming close to completion to installing the specimens then Watching people's reaction. is really, really, really, Marvelous and very, very [01:02:00] satisfying. Obviously, when we installed, finally, the, the big tourmaline crystal, it's over one meter tall.
It's actually not a crystal, it's a crystal cluster. And it's a very famous specimen. But also the other specimens, both the Peabody Museum specimens and the loans. And then just watching, People being pulled in. And the satisfaction comes also from the fact that I don't see people just [01:02:30] rushing through the Yale part of the mineral galleries into the David Trent Hall. But they're spending time with the Yale Peabody Museum specimens as well. We have again a recent, very recent, a year old, just a little bit over a year old donation of one of these stunning Chinese stibnite specimens from Wuning we displayed it in an unorthodox way, slanted at 60 degrees. So do you actually [01:03:00] look into the specimen, this spray of erupting from the specimen? some people I heard them the other day commenting that these must be like Superman's cave, kryptonite, know,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Oh,
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: David Trenthall, on loan from the Yampol family, is one of these, amazing etched aquamarine burial. varieties. And one [01:03:30] guy was just passing by it and just so nonchalantly just threw it up it out, Gatorade, you know.
So
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's great.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: are, are, are, are, very, fun to watch. And
spending Time. They are looking, and I think I'm not exaggerating. Dave will correct me. mineral galleries are getting close to the attractive power of the [01:04:00] dinosaur
Dr. David Skelly: I wouldn't argue against that. And those are the, the two, sets of spaces that come up most often in the reviews of the museum. And I think people expect to be excited about the dinosaurs. I think the minerals for first time visitors are the, the big surprise.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Well I mean uh, you, you got both of your passion comes through in spades in it. Yeah, Chris, I think we got to go, go check out this museum. This sounds like a
place to.
Dr. David Skelly: anytime.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: This sounds awesome. I
think uh when [01:04:30] I give it a talk in the EPS department, I think it was, I think it was closed for renovations.
It might've been around the 2016 kind of error a little bit, uh, thereafter. So it was, it was kind of, I didn't get a chance to go and it's kind of a rush visit, but Chris, we'll have to go check it out. This sounds amazing. And checking the Stibnite out at 60 degrees. That sounds. Totally cool. this has been super fun conversation guys.
Thank you so much. And thank you for your passion and just explaining the interesting aspects of, the Peabody museum. And we, we can't
Dr. David Skelly: Well,
Chris Bolhuis: yeah.
Dr. David Skelly: thank us This
Chris Bolhuis: I want to double click on [01:05:00] that, too, with what Jesse said. Passion is contagious With both of you, it just, it comes out and you're exuding it. And I really appreciate you both for that. it's pretty clear why you guys are so integral and so good at what you do.
So,
Dr. David Skelly: you
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: you know, because we are doing what we doing, you know, it's,
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, that's clear.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: you so much for the opportunity.
Dr. David Skelly: And thank you for doing what you guys do. It's really, really important.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you know, mostly it's just fun. Mostly I just get to give Chris a hard time on the air with other people listening. [01:05:30] So it's good. No, thank you very much for joining us. This has been a great pleasure and we'll, we'll look you up when we make it to new Haven. It'll be fun.
Dr. David Skelly: Anytime.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: right. Cheers guys.
squadcaster-6gjc_1_09-23-2024_194426: Thank you.
Chris Bolhuis: Hey, thanks for listening. There are many ways to support us. First of all, we have merch available. Go to planetgeocast. com. You can get some merch, get yourself a hat or a shirt.
Chris is loving it. Yeah. A little over there, grinning away, looking forward to his hat and shirt to arrive, white glove service. Uh, you can also download our mobile app, the Camp Geo mobile app, where we have visual podcast series available for purchase [01:06:00] and a bunch for free. So We have a big block of free content.
That is basically, if you want to get a college level geology education, you can do so there first link in your show notes. That helps us out a lot. You can also follow us on all social medias. We're at planetgeocast. Send us an email planetgeocast at gmail. com. We love getting questions.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Cheers.
