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The Peale is Baltimore’s Community Museum.

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Sassy Toes

Come Meet Sassy Toes - The Peale’s Biggest Resident!

"Sassy Toes" was created by artist Francisco Benavides for Submersive Productions’ 2017 immersive theater experience "H.T. Darling’s Incredible Musaeum Presents: The Treasures of New Galapagos"

There’s a new star at The Peale, and she’s impossible to miss.

 

Floating gracefully through the museum’s spiral stairwell is Sassy Toes, a towering puppet-sculpture of a mastodon whose presence fills the space with wonder and playfulness.

 

Sassy Toes is more than an artwork — she’s a symbol of everything The Peale stands for: creativity, curiosity, and community. Inspired by the original mastodon once exhibited by Charles Willson Peale in 1802 — the first full fossil reconstruction ever shown in America — this new interpretation brings that spirit of discovery into the 21st century.

Hand-crafted by local artists and collaborators, Sassy Toes was designed to move people — not just in size and scale, but emotionally. Her sweeping ribs and enormous limbs seem to climb upward through the stairwell, inviting visitors to follow her path from floor to floor. 

 

Each view reveals something new: light filtering through the bones, shadows dancing on the walls, and that unmistakable feeling that history is alive and playful here.

Now that she’s settled in, we invite you to come meet Sassy Toes in person. Bring your friends, family, and curiosity — she loves a good audience. Snap a selfie from the landing, share it to help us welcome this prehistoric Baltimorean to her new home. 

 

Because at The Peale, the past isn’t something we simply preserve — it’s something we play with, learn from, and bring to life.

Sassy Toes

November 8, 2025

Come Meet Sassy Toes – The Peale’s Biggest Resident! “Sassy Toes” was created by artist Francisco Benavides for Submersive Productions’ 2017 immersive theater experience “H.T. Darling’s Incredible Musaeum Presents: The Treasures of New Galapagos” There’s

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Founding Fossils: When Science Met Imagination

November 2, 2025

“Sassy Toes” was created by artist Francisco Benavides for Submersive Productions’ 2017 immersive theater experience “H.T. Darling’s Incredible Musaeum Presents: The Treasures of New Galapagos” In 1801, artist-scientist Charles Willson Peale led America’s first scientific

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