West Campus: A place for Yale's stuff

Christopher Gardner

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Yale’s large collection of taxidermy owes much to the big-game hunters of the twentieth century. Many of the Peabody’s animal heads were donated by A. C. Gilbert ’09MD, inventor of the Erector Set, and other Yale alumni who shot the creatures on trips to Africa and Alaska.

Christopher Gardner

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The Art Gallery is using a room at the West Campus to work on the restoration of an extensive sixth-century Byzantine mosaic excavated in Jordan in the 1930s. The tiles are being carefully removed from a concrete backing that was applied when they arrived at Yale. The device in the foreground is a computerized machine designed to cut off the concrete without damaging the tiles. A diamond drill bit is hidden under the white hood, and the hose reaching to the ceiling carries dust away from the piece of mosaic, which is upside down on the work table.