But will it fit on the page?

Mark Zurolo ’01MFA

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In November, a few weeks before the Peabody Museum’s Great Hall closed for major renovations, senior museum instructor Armand Morgan held a class on “paleo art.” Here, Morgan (pointing to paper) offers museum volunteer Karen Prendergast some tips on drawing a stegosaurus (not visible). “On the first day we really concentrated on skeletons,” says Morgan; day two, “we were doing muscles and adding skin.”

When the Great Hall reopens in 2023, the changes won’t be just architectural. Some specimens have to be updated—including this brontosaurus, which was mounted around 1930. Its tail will be at least ten feet longer and won’t droop, Morgan says, but will be “way up over the heads of visitors.” There are no plans for modernizing the hall’s 1947 Age of Reptiles mural, by Rudolph F. Zallinger ’42BFA, ’71MFA. “The mural has technical, cultural, and historical qualities that outweigh its scientific problems,” says Morgan. Some mistakes are too good to fix.