On March 13, 2020, the Yale University Art Gallery closed its doors to the public in response to an alarming increase of COVID-19 cases being reported across the country. Within a week, nearly every cultural institution in America had followed suit. A few of these were able to reopen, cautiously and to a limited number of visitors, within the year. At the Gallery, September 2021 marked the beginning of a return to our pre-pandemic ability to share our collections and exhibitions with students and the public.

The Gallery was not idle during these 18 months. The generosity of many donors, coupled with strategic purchases, brought a greater number and wider range of important works of art into the collection than at nearly any comparable period in our almost 200-year history. This installation brings together a selection of 50 of the more than 1,000 works accessioned by the Gallery in 2020 and 2021, while many other recent acquisitions, from 2019 to 2021, are on view in the permanent-collection galleries and can be identified by a new icon next to their labels.