Art in America Guide

Crafting Worldviews: Art and Science in Europe, 1500–1800
2023-02-17 08:00 - 2023-06-25 17:00 (America/Halifax) | Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St, New Haven, CT, 06510, United States
Crafting Worldviews: Art and Science in Europe, 1500–1800 examines the inseparable relationship among art, science, and European colonialism from the 16th through the 18th century—an era of voyage, trade, and Europe’s territorial dominance on a global scale. The objects featured in this multidisciplinary exhibition cross the modern-day boundaries of art and science and range from the everyday, such as books, maps, globes, drafting tools, microscopes, playing cards, and sundials, to the more unusual, such as a hand-cranked model of the solar system, an automaton clock, and anatomical figures carved in ivory. Drawn from across the University’s campus and crafted from both locally and globally obtained materials, including brass, ivory, mahogany, and ebony, the works featured are remarkable not just for their exquisite design but also their intricate construction. Together, they illuminate the critical role that art and science have played in shaping Europeans’ understanding of the world and their place within it.

Fazal Sheikh: Exposures
2022-09-09 08:00 - 2023-01-08 17:00
Fazal Sheikh (born 1965) has spent his career photographing individuals and communities displaced by conflict and environmental change. Acclaimed for his intimate portraits, Sheikh collaborates closely with his subjects to better understand and share their stories. This exhibition features Sheikh’s newest body of work, Exposure (2017–22), as well as an earlier series, Erasure (2010–15). To make Exposure, set in the American Southwest, Sheikh worked closely with the Utah Diné Bikéyah Native American grassroots organization to examine the human and environmental costs of the exploitation of public lands. The expansive landscapes seen in the series pay homage to the spiritual significance of the land, while portraits and collected testimonies reveal the ongoing but often invisible effects of environmental racism, especially on Indigenous inhabitants. In Erasure, Sheikh presents aerial photographs that record the effects of cultivation, displacement, and climate change on the Negev Desert in southern Israel; the series also includes poignant portraits that put a human face to the struggle of Palestinian Bedouins to remain in villages slated for demolition.

Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition
2022-09-09 08:00 - 2023-01-08 17:00
Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition is the first exhibition dedicated to the workshop of the Nigerian artist Moshood Olúṣọmọ Bámigbóyè (ca. 1885–1975). Part of a generation of Yorùbá woodcarvers with flourishing workshops in southwestern Nigeria, Bámigbóyè was highly regarded for the masks that he made in the 1920s and 1930s for ceremonies called Ẹpa. Today, these masks are considered some of the most spectacular and complex works of Yorùbá art ever created. Drawn from the collections of national and international museums, including the Yale University Art Gallery and the National Museum in Lagos, Nigeria, the masks and other sculptures in the exhibition—such as architectural elements from palaces and shrine complexes and objects made for a European clientele—present a nuanced account of the artist’s 50-year career. A selection of textiles, beadwork, metalwork, and ceramics situates Bámigbóyè’s work within the broader scope of 20th-century Yorùbá creative expression, while archival images show how his life and workshop practice reflect the artistic, religious, and political changes taking place in Nigeria at the time. With video footage of an Ẹpa performance staged by the artist’s family in honor of the exhibition Bámigbóyè: A Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá Tradition celebrates the global legacy of this artist while also underscoring his enduring importance to his community.

Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power
2022-02-25 08:00 - 2022-07-10 17:00
For millennia, gold’s warm glow, resistance to corrosion, and rarity have made it a preferred material for objects meant to convey prestige, authority, or devotion. Drawing on the Yale University Art Gallery’s extraordinary holdings of American gold and augmented by paintings, photographs, and other works of art, Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power is the first exhibition since 1963 to survey the role of gold in American art and culture. The exhibition considers a wide range of objects spanning more than 400 years, such as early colonial betrothal and mourning rings; a sumptuous Gilded Age coffee service by luxury retailer Tiffany and Company; rare coins made from ore mined during the Gold Rush; a pair of elaborate shoe buckles from the late 18th century that speaks to the wealth derived from the slave trade in the Caribbean; and works by contemporary artists who explore the medium’s historical associations as well as the environmental and human costs of its extraction from the earth. With over 70 examples of gold and related material, Gold in America demonstrates our nation’s longtime fascination with this gleaming metal.

Midcentury Abstraction: A Closer Look
2022-02-25 08:00 - 2022-06-26 17:00
Midcentury Abstraction: A Closer Look highlights the breadth and variety of practices in abstract art that took place around the middle of the 20th century. The exhibition is inspired by a recent gift to the Yale University Art Gallery from the Friday Foundation honoring the legacy of the late collectors Jane Lang Davis and Richard E. Lang. This important gift includes revelatory works on canvas and paper by the celebrated painters Franz Kline (1910–1962) and Mark Rothko (1903–1970) that show how these artists engaged with both abstraction and representation over the course of their careers. Eschewing the notion that there was a linear shift toward abstraction at midcentury, the exhibition showcases a group of artists who freely moved in and out of abstraction or blended their radical approaches with traditional subject matter, such as landscape, portraiture, or still life. In addition to Kline and Rothko—best known as Abstract Expressionists—the exhibition includes objects in a variety of media by Lee Bontecou (b. 1931), Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994), Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), George Miyasaki (1935–2013), and more. Collectively, these works present midcentury abstraction as a dynamic process of exploration pursued by artists who were unafraid to break the boundaries of genre, medium, or style.

Recent Acquisitions
2022-02-25 08:00 - 2022-06-26 17:00
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.

Yale Art Gallery: On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale
2021-09-10 08:00 - 2022-01-09 17:00
On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale showcases and celebrates the remarkable achievements of an impressive roster of women artists who have graduated from Yale University. Presented on the occasion of two major milestones—the 50th anniversary of coeducation at Yale College and the 150th anniversary of the first women students at the University, who came to study at the Yale School of the Fine Arts when it opened in 1869—the exhibition features works drawn entirely from the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery that span a variety of media, such as paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photography, and video. Beginning with Josephine Miles Lewis, the very first student, male or female, to be awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, in 1891, the show highlights the work of nearly 80 artist-graduates, including Emma Bacon, Certificate of Completion 1885; Audrey Flack, B.F.A. 1952; Eva Hesse, B.F.A. 1959; Sylvia Plimack Mangold, B.F.A. 1961; Jennifer Bartlett, B.F.A. 1964, M.F.A. 1965; Howardena Pindell, M.F.A. 1967; Roni Horn, M.F.A. 1978; Maya Lin, B.A. 1981, M.ARCH. 1986; An-My Lê, M.F.A. 1993; Rina Banerjee, M.F.A. 1995; Wangechi Mutu, M.F.A. 2000; Mickalene Thomas, M.F.A. 2002; Mary Reid Kelley, M.F.A. 2009; Njideka Akunyili Crosby, M.F.A. 2011; and many others. The title of the exhibition references the phrase used in the landmark 1972 U.S. federal law Title IX—which declared that no one could be discriminated against “on the basis of sex” in any education program receiving federal financial assistance, and which forced the School of Art to hire full-time female faculty beginning that year. Amid the rise of feminist movements—from women’s suffrage at the turn of the 20th century, to the ERA movement of the mid-20th century, to the #MeToo movement of today—this exhibition asserts the crucial role that women have played in pushing creative boundaries at Yale, and in the art world at large.

James Prosek: Art, Artifact, Artifice
2020-02-14 10:00 - 2021-02-28 17:00
Award-winning artist, naturalist, and writer James Prosek (b. 1975, B.A. 1997) brings his love of the natural world and his lifelong fascination with the naming and classification of nature to the Yale University Art Gallery in James Prosek: Art, Artifact, Artifice. The exhibition brings together objects from the collections of the Gallery, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Yale Center for British Art. It places Prosek’s work in dialogue with a wide range of both man-made objects and those produced by billions of years of evolution, or what naturalist Charles Darwin described as “endless forms most beautiful.” By challenging traditional separations of museum collections into “art” and “artifact,” or “natural” and “man-made,” the artist asks us to explore to what extent these distinctions matter. Is it helpful for us to draw such boundaries? Or do they limit what we are able to see, substituting categories and classifications for experience? “What would happen,” Prosek said, “if we stop putting things into neat categories and simply marvel at the wondrous and complex world of which we are a part?”

Book Launch and Reading: “James Prosek: Art, Artifact, Artifice.”

Reckoning with “The Incident”: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural
2020-01-17 10:00 - 2021-02-28 17:00
In 1952, while a student at La Esmeralda—Mexico’s national school of art—American artist John Wilson (1922–2015) painted a powerful mural that he titled The Incident. The fresco depicted a scene of a racial-terror lynching at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, as witnessed by a young African American family. Although the mural is no longer extant, this exhibition brings together publicly for the first time nearly all of Wilson’s known preparatory sketches and painted studies for it, as well as related prints and drawings. Inspired by the political and social activism of the Mexican muralists, in particular José Clemente Orozco, and haunted by images of lynchings that he had seen in newspapers as a child, Wilson revisited the subject of The Incident over many years as a way of grappling with racial violence, both past and present. The works on view, some disturbing in content, encourage contemporary viewers to do the same.

Reckoning with "The Incident": John Wilson's Studies for a Lynching Mural
2020-01-17 10:00 - 2020-05-10 17:00
January 17, 2020–May 10, 2020
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.

In 1952, while a student at La Esmeralda—Mexico’s national school of art—American artist John Wilson (1922–2015) painted a powerful mural that he titled The Incident. The fresco depicted a scene of a racial-terror lynching at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, as witnessed by a young African American family. Although the mural is no longer extant, this exhibition brings together publicly for the first time nearly all of Wilson’s known preparatory sketches and painted studies for it, as well as related prints and drawings. Inspired by the political and social activism of the Mexican muralists, in particular José Clemente Orozco, and haunted by images of lynchings that he had seen in newspapers as a child, Wilson revisited the subject of The Incident over many years as a way of grappling with racial violence, both past and present. The works on view, some disturbing in content, encourage contemporary viewers to do the same.

Exhibition made possible by the Isabel B. Wilson Memorial Fund. Organized by Pamela Franks, Class of 1956 Director, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass., and former Senior Deputy Director and Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and Elisabeth Hodermarsky, the Sutphin Family Senior Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery.

Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art
2019-11-01 10:00 - 2021-02-28 17:00
Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art emphasizes a multiplicity of Indigenous voices and experiences through more than 75 artworks dating from the early 19th century to the present. This student-curated exhibition—the first exhibition of Indigenous art to bring together objects from the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library—showcases basketry, beadwork, textiles, pottery, drawings, photography, and wood carving by prominent artists such as Maria Martinez, Marie Watt, and Will Wilson, among others. Guided by the four themes in its title, the exhibition investigates the connections that Indigenous peoples have to their lands; the power of objects as expressions of sovereignty; the passing on of artistic practices and traditions; and the relationships that artists and nations have to animals, plants, and cosmological beings. The objects on view contribute to the larger narrative of American art and act as touchstones for further partnerships with Indigenous nations.

Exhibition made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Jane and Gerald Katcher Fund for Education, and the Nolen-Bradley Family Fund for Education. Organized by Katherine McCleary, B.A. 2018, and Leah Shrestinian, B.A. 2018, with Joseph Zordan, B.A. 2019. Assistance provided by Kaitlin McCormick, the former Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Art and Curation, Department of American Paintings and Sculpture.

Ceremonial Dress from Southwest China: The Ann B. Goodman Collection
2019-09-06 10:00 - 2020-01-05 17:00
September 6, 2019–January 5, 2020

Drawn from a recent gift to the Yale University Art Gallery, this exhibition showcases the technical knowledge, artistic skill, and visual imagination on display in the ceremonial clothing of those living in Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan, and other provinces of southwestern China. While the Han people make up more than 90 percent of the inhabitants of China, the individuals who created the textiles on display identify as some of the 55 other groups, which are distinguished by lifestyle and language. Worn during life-cycle ceremonies such as births, marriages, harvest celebrations, and deaths, as well as at other significant events, the clothing on view—including jackets, skirts, baby carriers, hats, and shoes—is made by the women of each community. They gather the cotton and indigo, dye the cloth, sew the garments, and embellish them with batik, embroidery, appliqué, and other techniques, blending traditional motifs with personal taste to create unique works of art. In addition to over 15 ensembles, the exhibition features silver headdress ornaments, necklaces, and bracelets produced by men in the same communities and worn as symbols of skill and wealth.

Exhibition made possible by the Wolfe Family Exhibition and Publication Fund. Organized by Denise Patry Leidy, the Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art, and Ruth Barnes, the Thomas Jaffe Curator of Indo-Pacific Art.

William Bailey: Looking through Time
2019-09-06 10:00 - 2020-01-05 17:00
September 6, 2019–January 5, 2020

This exhibition considers the career of William Bailey (B.F.A. 1955, M.F.A. 1957), the Kingman Brewster Professor Emeritus of Art at Yale, through a focused survey of the artist’s paintings, drawings, and prints. Special emphasis is given to Bailey’s still-life paintings in oil, including the Yale University Art Gallery’s Still Life—Table with Ochre Wall (1972), an outstanding example of the artist’s signature style. Known for his meditative canvases depicting objects and figures painted from memory, Bailey is one of the artists—including Audrey Flack, Alex Katz, and Philip Pearlstein—who defied the prevailing taste for abstraction at midcentury and instead committed themselves to representational painting. Bailey’s artistic inspirations span centuries, from Raphael and Piero della Francesca to Giorgio de Chirico and Piet Mondrian, with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne in between.

Exhibition made possible by the Friends of American Arts at Yale Exhibition Fund and the Jan and Warren Adelson Fund. Organized by Mark D. Mitchell, the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture.

Practice with Art: Cultivating Mindfulness in the Galleries
2019-07-24 14:00 - 15:00
Join us this summer for drop-in, art-inspired mindfulness sessions facilitated by Anne Dutton, MA, LCSW (Yale Stress Center) and Danielle Casioppo, MS, CAPP, RYT (Being Well at Yale). Each hour-long session includes contemplation and discussion of an artwork from the Gallery’s collection and a mindfulness and/or mindful-movement practice. Mindful movement consists of gentle stretching, breathing practices, and a few basic standing yoga poses, all correlated with the selected work of art. Chairs will be provided; no yoga mats or special clothing needed. Suitable for all levels.
Please come to one or all sessions. Space is limited. Not suitable for children under 13.

Walking Tour, Walls of Light: Stained Glass in New Haven
2019-06-19 12:30 - 13:30
Wednesday, June 19, 2019, 12:30 pm

Join John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts, for a walking tour of architectural glass on the Yale University campus and in downtown New Haven. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition A Nation Reflected: Stories in American Glass.
Space is limited. Weather permitting.

Open to:

General Public

Conversation, Supercharged Copper: The Electroplates of Redoubt
2019-06-12 12:30 - 13:30
Jade Archuleta-Gans, Jessica Heimann, and Elisabeth Hodermarsky

Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 12:30 pm

Join Jade Archuleta-Gans, Researcher and Fabricator, Matthew Barney Studio, Jessica Heimann, Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry, and Elisabeth Hodermarsky, the Sutphin Family Senior Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, for a discussion of the electroplated copper plates on view in the exhibition Matthew Barney: Redoubt.
Space is limited.

Open to:

General Public

Film Screening, Redoubt (2018; 134 mins., 3 secs.)
2019-06-06 17:30 - 20:00
At the center of Matthew Barney’s Redoubt project (2016–19) is an eponymous two-hour film (2018; 134 mins., 3 secs.) that traces the story of a wolf hunt, intertwining the theme of the hunt with those of mythology and artistic creation. Redoubt was shot in Idaho’s rugged Sawtooth Mountains and continues Barney’s long-standing preoccupation with landscape as both a setting and subject in his films. Structured as a series of six hunts that unfold over seven days and nights, the film loosely adapts the myth of Diana, goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, a hunter who accidentally trespasses on her and is punished. Like most of Barney’s previous films, Redoubt contains no dialogue; instead, the characters communicate through choreography that echoes and foreshadows their encounters with wildlife. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Matthew Barney: Redoubt. Generously sponsored by the Hayden Visiting Artists Fund.
Special Note: Hunting scenes in Redoubt were staged using special effects. Trained animals were provided by professional handlers who monitored their safety and the conditions on set. Wild animals were filmed in their natural habitats.

Conversation, Material Conflict: A Conversation with Tomashi Jackson and Naomi Safran-Hon
2019-06-06 17:30 - 18:30
Tomashi Jackson and Naomi Safran-Hon

Thursday, June 6, 2019, 5:30 pm

Artists Tomashi Jackson, M.F.A. 2016, and Naomi Safran-Hon, M.F.A. 2010, incorporate both traditional and nontraditional materials in their artwork to engage in contemporary cultural conflict. The two will hold a conversation moderated by Mark Aronson, Chief Conservator at the Yale Center for British Art, that will probe how the artists’ use of materials in their visually engaging and inventive work relates to themes of political, racial, global, and personal conflict.
This conversation is the keynote for the 2019 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Students and Mentors Institute in Technical Art History (HBCU SMITAH), a weeklong workshop hosted by the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Yale University, and generously funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Open to:

General Public

Studio Program, Sidewalk Studio
2019-06-06 14:00 - 16:00
Thursday, June 6, 2019, 2:00 pm–4:00 pm

Sidewalk Studio is an outdoor program that takes place in front of the Gallery and fosters impromptu art making on a drop-in basis. Led by Gallery staff and Yale University undergraduate and graduate students, each session focuses on a single medium and connects to related works in the collection.
All are welcome. Weather permitting.

Open to:

General Public

Yale University Art Gallery, Performance, Playing Images: An Exploration of Music and Art
2019-06-05 12:30 - 13:30
Jessica Sack and the Haven String Quartet

Wednesday, June 5, 2019, 12:30 pm

Featuring Jessica Sack, the Jan and Frederick Mayer Senior Associate Curator of Public Education, and live music by the Haven String Quartet, this performance connects close listening to music with close looking at art.
Space is limited. Please meet in the Gallery lobby.

Open to:

General Public

A Nation Reflected: Stories in American Glass
2019-03-29 10:00 - 2019-09-29 17:00
Featuring more than 100 objects drawn from the Yale University Art Gallery’s collection with select loans from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, A Nation Reflected: Stories in American Glass explores the myriad ways in which glass expresses the cultural, technological, and artistic aspirations of those who live and work in the United States.
https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/nation-reflected-stories-american-glass

Matthew Barney: Redoubt
2019-03-01 10:00 - 2019-06-16 17:00
In his first major exhibition at his alma mater, the renowned and provocative contemporary artist Matthew Barney, B.A. 1989, presents his latest work, including a new feature-length film titled Redoubt. In addition to the film, the exhibition features pieces in other media that demonstrate casting and electroplating techniques developed by Barney. Touching on themes of artistic creation, ecology, and dance, Matthew Barney: Redoubt showcases the artist’s trademark interdisciplinary and multimedia approach.
https://artgallery.yale.edu/exhibitions/exhibition/matthew-barney-redoubt
