Joe Webb Peoples Museum at Wesleyan University

Our second display cabinet has specimens in alcohol from the George Brown Goode collections: a Portuguese-Man-o'-War (not a jellyfish, but a siphonophore), a ray, and two starfish.

And speaking of the Wesleyan Museum which closed in 1957, and whale vertebrae, here is a recently found (in Shanklin) picture of people from the old museum, on its steps, with the whale vertebra in full view. The picture will go to the Special Collections and Archives.

We have got two great new display cabinets in the Exley Lobby: one with a vertebra of a whale, which had been loaned indefinitely to what is now Mystic Seaport when the museum closed in 1957. We received it back at Wesleyan last year, it has been used in teaching, and here it is on display.

The Joe Webb Peoples Museum received a nice donation from Ibby Newland (WES '26)- thank you, Ibby: a dinosaur footprint (Grallator) which she had inherited from her great-grandfather, Oliver Butterworth, author of the classic 1956 children's book 'The Enormous Egg' - yes, a dinosaur came out of that enormous egg.

A reminder that the Joe Webb Peoples Museum will once again have an Open House during Commencement weekend. Visit us Saturday May 22, 2-4 pm, both the Museum on the 4th floor of Exley, and our exhibits on the third floor (including the new mineral exhibit). And if you take a tour of the new Science building, look at the great fossils in their cladding stones: ammonites, belemnites, sponges and more! these are all from the same age and region in Bavaria of the famous Solnhofen fossils (the most famous one if Archaeopteryx) - look at our collections of fossils and casts in the Joe Webb Peoples Museum, including our exhibit on the 4th floor in the hallway.

The Joe Webb Peoples Museum will once again have an Open House during Commencement weekend. Visit us Saturday May 22, 2-4 pm, both the Museum on the 4th floor of Exley, and our new Mineral exhibit (from the new 'Uncle Warren' collection) on the third floor.

On 11 December students in a class led by Ron Kuivila performed the 'Musicircus' centered around John Cage. Included in the performance was Cage's piece 'Inlets', in which 3 musicians use large conch shells to pour water, producing a gentle gurgling sound. Conch shells on loan by the Joe Webb Peoples Museum!

The new science building at Wesleyan is nearing completion. There are a few places where you can see the stone cladding: these are Jurassic Plattenkalke from Bavaria (southern Germany), from the Upper Jurassic (about 150 million years old). They are full of fossils! These rocks formed in the same regional shallow water basin, in a warm climate, where our Solnhofen Fossils, on display in the Joe Webb Peoples Museum, were living. Have a look at the walls of the Science building and our Solnhofen collections!

We put a new Collection Highlight on display in the Science Library: the very rare mineral charoite, only occurring in Siberia

At the closure of the Judd Hall Wesleyan Museum of Natural History in 1957, a 14 ft long lower jaw of a s***m whale (Physeter macrocephalus) from Nantucket (MA) was loaned for long-term to Mystic Seaport. Received from Reverend John Lindsay, in 1835, mounted by Captain John Stetson. Now in the center of the Mystic Seaport exhibit: Monstrous: Whaling and Its Colossal Impact. https://mysticseaport.org/exhibit/monstrous/