The Peabody Museum is closed, and yet, through the documentary magic of photography, you can still go for the gold.
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Technically, it comes in leaves, crystals, plates and dust. Romantically, it comes in flowers, fingers, flames and suns.
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Itβs California gold, now starring in California Gold at the Peabody Museum. Featuring almost two dozen rare specimens alongside vintage tools of the gold tradeβall on loan from a private collectionβthe one-case show illuminates not just historic methods California miners used to find, extract and assay gold but also, in accessible terms, the geological processes that positioned and shaped the gold those miners sought.
Like its neighbors, the showβs centerpiece, nicknamed βSonoran Sun,β emerged from cooling subterranean magma chambers beneath the Sierra Nevada mountains. Perhaps a foot across and fittingly molten in appearance, itβs a contrast to smaller examples bearing more geometric or crystalline features.
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Richard Kissel, the museumβs director of public programs, marvels at the natural yet βsculpturalβ character of the exhibitβs precious contents. Stefan Nicolescu, the museumβs collections manager for mineralogy and meteoritics, says the quality and size of the specimens render the show βone of the most spectacularβ displays of its kind βin the entire world.β Aiding the spectacle is the exhibitβs dramatic design and lightingβwhat museum director David Skelly describes as a βmore modern way to display these sorts of objects.β
In other words, at the Peabody Museum, the gold strikes you.
California Gold: Modern Marvels from the Golden State
Yale Peabody of Natural History β 170 Whitney Ave, New Haven (map)
Currently closed due to COVID-19
(203) 432-8987
www.peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/california-gold
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. This lightly updated story originally published on April 17, 2018.