Art Round-Up 
Revisiting Yale’s Two Great Art Museums

– By Arthur Stampleman –

Once again, there are two wonderful museums to visit in New Haven. Art goers can find an impressive concentration of art less than an hour from Rye without traveling to New York City. In December, New Haven’s Yale University Art Gallery re-opened after being closed for several years for a comprehensive renovation. And right across the street is the Yale Center for British Art.

The architect for both museums was the renowned Louis Kahn. The university art gallery built in 1953 and the British center opened in 1977. Paul Goldberger, architectural reviewer for the New Yorker, has described the 1977 building as a “truly great building” that had “no contradiction between [Kahn’s] desire to create a moving and profound work of architecture and … accommodate … the functional demands of viewing and storing works of art” and “in which light joins with structure and space to create truly sensual presence.”

However, it is the earlier building that has enjoyed the greater focus recently because of the renovation. It restored the museum to Kahn’s original vision by restoring the original open plan. Also, state-of-the-art building systems were introduced, such as new glass and window structures, to ensure the proper display and preservation of the collection. Among its celebrated features are the hollow concrete tetrahedrons that make up the ceilings and house a number of building systems.

Yale’s university art gallery was the country’s first art museum. It dates back to 1832 when the history painter John Trumbull gave the university a large number of paintings and designed Yale’s first museum building in return for an annuity. The present museum’s collection displays many of Trumbull’s portraits and history paintings including a full size George Washington and studies for Trumbull’s famous The Declaration of Independence and various battle scenes.

The gallery’s diverse collection is spread among a number of departments: African Art, American Decorative Arts, American Paintings and Sculpture, Ancient Art, Art of the Ancient Americas, Asian Art, Coins and Medals, Early European Art, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Visitors won’t want to miss the art in the modern and contemporary galleries, which ranges from van Gogh (including his famous The Night Café), the Impressionists, Cezanne and Picasso to later works by artists such as Caro, Duchamp, Léger and Giacometti. The American artists represented move from Trumbull and Copley to Homer and Hopper to Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning. The African collection of 1,000 works was recently enhanced with the gift of Charles B. Benenson’s collection of 600 African objects and is concentrated in ritual figures and masks from West and Central Africa. The gallery is unique because presentation emphasizes ensembles of works that would normally function together in African ritual and works are positioned at levels one would normally see them.

The Yale Center for British Art houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. It was presented to Yale by Paul Mellon, Class of 1929. The collection of paintings‚ sculpture‚ drawings‚ prints‚ rare books and manuscripts represents the development of British art‚ life‚ and thought from the Elizabethan period onward.

Among the artists best represented in the center are William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner as well as paintings and sculpture by such 20th-century artists as Stanley Spencer, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Damien Hirst. “Paul Mellon's Legacy: A Passion for British Art”, a special exhibit to commemorate the centennial of Mellon’s birth and celebrate the center’s 30th anniversary, runs through July 29. It features nearly 250 “treasures” from the collection.

Both museums are located on New Haven’s Chapel Street, the art gallery at 1111 and the center at 1080. For information on the gallery, contact 203-432-0600 or www.artgallery.yale.edu, for the center, 203-432-2800 or www.ycba.yale.edu, respectively. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Thursday in the summer) and Sunday 1 to 6 p.m.