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For centuries, seemingly unknowable monsters lurked under the murky seas around Europe, revealing only glimpses of themselves to wary seafarers. During these expansive times, when ocean travel was revelatory and perilous, maps tended to feature drawings of hideous dragons and serpents of the seas. But slowly, Europeans became acquainted with these beasts as they washed up on the shores and as the whaling industry began to haul them alongside their ships. Scholars and scientists soon realized that whales were a lot more like humans than they had believed: Mammals replaced monsters.
A new show at the MIT Museum in Boston called “Monsters of the Deep: Between Imagination and Science” traces this arc in European historical understanding of whales, and with it, science’s relationship to fear and creativity. In the exhibit, monsters are imagined as midwives, assistants to the birth of science. Their stirrings in ancient landscapes of the half-known invited first imagination and then rigorous inquiry to do the work of exploring our world.
Shown here is an image from the show, titled The Monodon Monoceros and The Bicorned, a pair of 1834 drawings of narwhals done in London by American artist Frederick Sexton. Many medieval Europeans assumed that narwhal horns came from unicorns, but as locals learned more about the narwhal, they were forced to reconsider the origins of these once-mysterious objects. Some naturalists thought certain species of narwhals had two tusks, as shown in the bottom drawing, and in fact, while rare, this turned out to be true.
The show also features a series of maps and prints from the 16th and 17th centuries that conjure nightmarish ocean serpents with fangs, claws, and wings. Later scientific texts and prints, travelogues, popular books, and broadsides show increasingly realistic portraits of whales, fish, and scenes of encounter between humans and creatures of the deep across the ages. Also included in the exhibit are a preserved narwhal tusk and a video of a giant squid.
“Monsters of the Deep,” which opened in April and is on display through January 2026, features more than 40 images and objects dating from the 1540s through the 1860s. The show draws from the MIT Museum’s Allan Forbes Collection, a group of more than 2,000 whale-related European and Japanese prints dating from the 16th through the 19th centuries. The public can also explore digitized versions of the objects on the exhibition website.
The show is a reminder of the exquisite connection between the fanciful and the real. And the slow and steady evolution from the mythological to the scientific in human cultural history. 
Lead image: Frederick Sexton
