Yale University Art Gallery
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Yale University Art Gallery houses a significant and encyclopedic collection of art in several buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Although it embraces all cultures and periods, the Gallery possesses especially renowned collections of early Italian painting, African sculpture, and modern art. Its holdings of American decorative and fine arts are amongst the best in existence.
History
The Yale University Art Gallery is the oldest university art museum in the western hemisphere. The Gallery was founded in 1832, when patriot-artist John Trumbull donated to Yale College more than 100 paintings of the American Revolution and designed the original Picture Gallery. This building, on Old Campus, was razed in 1901.
The Gallery's main building was built in 1953 and was among the very first designed by Louis Kahn, who taught architecture at Yale. A complete renovation, which returned many spaces to Kahn's original vision, was completed in December 2006 by Polshek Partnership Architects. The older Tuscan romanesque portion was built in 1928 and was designed by Egerton Swartwout. A 10-year renovation project is due to be complete in 2011.
Collection
The Gallery’s encyclopedic collections number more than 185,000 objects ranging in date from ancient times to the present day. The permanent collection includes:
- African Art: over 1000 objects in wood, metal, ivory and ceramic
- American Decorative Arts: about 18,000 objects in silver, glass, wood, porcelain, and textile with an emphasis on the colonial and early federal periods.
- American Paintings and Sculpture: over 2,500 paintings, 500 sculptures, and 300 miniatures from before the mid-twentieth century including paintings by Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Frederick Remington, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, John Singer Sargent, Arthur Dove, and Edward Hopper, and sculptures by Hezekiah Augur, Hiram Powers, Horatio Greenough, William Henry Rinehart, Chauncey Ives, Alexander Archipenko, and Alexander Calder.
- Ancient Art: over 13,000 objects from the Near East, Egypt, Greece, Etruria, and Rome dating from the Neolithic to the early Byzantine.
- Art of the Ancient Americas: Mayan and Olmec figurines, vessels and sculptures.
- Asian Art
- Coins and Medals
- Early European Art
- Modern and Contemporary Art
- Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
In 2005, the museum announced that it had acquired 1,465 gelatin silver prints by the influential American landscape photographer Robert Adams. In 2009, the museum mounted an exhibition of its extensive collection of Picasso paintings and drawings, in collaboration with the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. For the first time, portions of the Yale University Library's Gertrude Stein writing archives were displayed next to relevant drawings from Picasso.
Mission
The mission of the gallery is to encourage appreciation and understanding of art and its role in society through direct engagement with original works of art. The Gallery stimulates active learning about art and the creative process through research, teaching, and dialogue among communities of Yale students, faculty, artists, scholars, alumni, and the wider public. The Gallery organizes exhibitions and educational programs to offer enjoyment and encourage inquiry, while building and maintaining its collections in trust for future generations.
