MagSpring2015_220_final_onlinetest

spring 2015

YA L E
U N I V E R SSI TI TY
Y
A R T
GALLERY
GALLERY
The Yale University Art Gallery is grateful
to its supporters for helping
to make our exhibitions and programs
possible. In addition to specific grants
noted herein, the Gallery’s educational
offerings are supported in part by:
anonymous; Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Nolen,
B.A. 1948; Ms. Eliot Nolen, B.A. 1984,
and Mr. Timothy P. Bradley, B.A. 1983;
Christian Nolen, B.A. 1982; Malcolm
Nolen, B.A. 1983; Banco Santander;
Director’s Resource Endowment Fund;
William Bernhard Class of ’54 Education
Fund; Cogger Family Fund for
Education; Education and Outreach
Fund; Alva Gimbel-Greenberg Family
Fund; Allan S. Kaplan Memorial Fund for
Under graduate Programs; Jane and
Gerald Katcher Fund for Education;
Kempner Family Endowment Fund;
David Kruidenier, B.A. 1944, Fund; Carol
and Sol LeWitt Fund for Education;
Manton Foundation Public Education
Fund; Frederick and Jan Mayer
Education Curatorship Fund; Rosalee
and David McCullough Family Fund;
New Haven School Children Education
Fund; Katharine Ordway Exhibition and
Publication Fund; Vincent Scully Fund
for Education; Seedlings Foundation
Public Education Fund; Shamos Family
Fund in Support of Student Outreach
Programs; Robert E. Steele, M.P.H. 1971,
Ph.D. 1975, and Jean E. Steele
Endowment Fund; Amor and Margaret
Towles Education Fund; Wolfe Family
Exhibition and Publication Fund;
Margaret and Angus Wurtele, B.A. 1956,
Fund for Education; and Yale University
Art Gallery Fund for Education.
For information on how to support
the Gallery’s programs, please contact
Jill Westgard, Deputy Director for
Advancement, at 203.432.0624 or
jill.westgard@yale.edu.
B
Director’s Letter
This spring’s monumental exhibition
The Critique of Reason: Romantic
Art, 1760–1860 marks an important
moment for the arts at Yale
University, as it is the first collaborative
exhibition jointly mounted by
the Yale Center for British Art and
Yale University Art Gallery. While
the two teaching museums have
generously lent works to each other
and our curators have consulted one
another on many projects over the
past four decades, this exhibition is
the result of a team of curators and
fellows from both institutions working
closely together from inception to
installation. As the saying goes, the
resulting whole is greater than the
sum of its parts, with the show bringing
together an array of outstanding
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
works from two great collections.
Once the exhibition concludes in
July, a number of artworks lent by
the Center will remain on view at the
Gallery while the Center continues
the yearlong renovation of its 1978
Louis Kahn building.
A rich spirit of collaboration
inspires many of the Gallery’s most
successful projects. This past summer,
we partnered with New Haven
Promise—the Yale-sponsored program
that provides scholarships to graduates
of New Haven public high schools—to
offer six internships to local youths
seeking to gain practical experience
working in a museum. As you will
read in the article on pages 14–15, we
learned much from the participating
college students and the skills and
ideas they brought to their work. Their
achievements at the Gallery have had
a lasting impact and inspired us to
continue and expand this program in
summer 2015. Our new after-school
teen program, described on pages
16–17, is the result of a group effort by
New Haven Promise students and our
Education Department.
John Walsh, b.a. 1961, is a role
model for all of us when we think of
what it means to collaborate. Highly
respected by his peers and revered
by active learners of all ages, John
constantly encourages all of us to
view art with both discernment and
pleasure. When he is training the
Wurtele Gallery Teachers with Jessica
Sack, the Jan and Frederick Mayer
Senior Associate Curator of Public
Education, they both consistently
encourage students to swiftly step
into the role of teacher, doing so while
providing them with a strong foundation
in close-looking and active
questioning. In debuting another collaborative
project, John has teamed
up with Laurence Kanter, Chief
Curator and the Lionel Goldfrank III
Curator of European Art, to present a
stunning installation of works borrowed
from the renowned Rose-Marie
and Eijk van Otterloo collection of
Dutch Old Master paintings, a project
that includes very rich public
programming.
Our collection-sharing initiative,
which makes works of art from the
Gallery’s collection available to participating
institutions, is a model
of partnership that other museums
want to join or emulate. We will soon
share works from the exhibition
Vida y Drama de México: Prints from the
Monroe E. Price and Aimée Brown Price
Collection with the Vincent Price Art
Museum at East Los Angeles College,

a teaching museum with a strong collection
of modern and contemporary
Hispanic art.
Finally, my colleagues and I
are very grateful to Kate Ezra, who
just retired as the Nolen Curator of
Education and Academic Affairs. She
has done so much to develop many
wonderful relationships with a
legion of faculty members who now
Yale’s campus and in our New Haven
community. Please visit with us often
and enjoy the great pleasures that you
will find in the Gallery, always free and
open to the public.
Above: Allan
Chasanoff (center),
B.A. 1961, discusses
his book art collection
with Jock Reynolds
(left), the Henry J.
Heinz II Director,
student curators
(center right), and
artist Doug Beube (far
right) in preparation
for the exhibition Odd
Volumes: Book Art from
the Allan Chasanoff
Collection
Cover: George Stubbs,
A Lion Attacking a
Horse (detail), 1770.
Oil on canvas. Yale
University Art Gallery,
Gift of the Yale
University Art Gallery
Associates
regularly enrich their courses with
Jock Reynolds
direct encounters with the Gallery’s
The Henry J. Heinz II Director
collections and curators. I also look
forward to the forthcoming artistic and
educational collaborations our newest
staff members will develop across
3

Special Exhibition
The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860
The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art,
1760–1860 is the first major collaborative
exhibition between the Yale University
Art Gallery and the Yale Center for
British Art. The exhibition opens at the
Gallery on March 6, bringing together
over 300 works from the museums’
holdings, augmented by special loans
from select private collections and
Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library. The
Critique of Reason features paintings,
sculptures, medals, watercolors, drawings,
prints, and photographs by such
iconic artists as William Blake, John
Constable, Honoré Daumier, Pierre-
Jean David d’Angers, Eugène Delacroix,
Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya,
John Martin, and Joseph Mallord
William Turner. Challenging the
notion that Romanticism stood in
opposition to reason and the scientific
method, the exhibition’s eight thematic
sections reveal the Romantics as
attentive explorers of their natural and
cultural worlds as well as artists deeply
engaged with the mysterious and the
spiritual.
Two galleries in the exhibition
explore the tension between subjective
expression and scientific description in
the Romantic era. “Landscape and the
Perceiving Subject”—inspired directly
by Constable’s remark that “painting is
a science and should be pursued as an
enquiry into the laws of nature”—is the
largest section in the show and boasts
some of the most stunning works in
Yale’s collections, including those by
Constable, Jean-François Millet, and
Turner. The paintings, watercolors, and
prints exemplify how the Romantics
used their careful observations of
nature, space, light, and weather to
evoke mood and meaning.
“Nature: Spectacle and Specimen”
showcases works that straddle the line
between art and science. These include
stunning views of Mount Vesuvius by
Turner and anatomical studies by such
artists as Delacroix and George Stubbs,
who present exacting depictions of
mammalian anatomy while dramatizing
the wildness of their subjects using
highly theatrical compositions.
The Romantics came of age in
an era of colonial expansion, travel,
trade, and ethnographic study, which
led to both scholarly discourse and
popular fictions regarding non-
Western cultures and locales that
stimulated the artistic imagination.
The works in “Distant Lands, Foreign
Peoples” range from studies of exotic
costumes by Eugène Fromentin, John
Frederick Lewis, and Auguste Raffet
to watercolors and photographs that
transform Egyptian monuments into
Romantic ruins.
The prevailing notion of the
Romantic artist as an isolated dreamer
given to introversion and removed
from society and politics is refuted
throughout the section titled “The
Artist as Social Critic.” Many artists
from this period were vociferous
social commentators, carrying out the
Enlightenment ideals of free thought
and action. Yale’s stellar print collections
are brought to the fore here with
rarely exhibited works by Daumier and
Géricault and the full suite of Goya’s
galvanizing Disasters of War (etched
1810–20, published 1863).
“Religion after the Age of Reason”
illustrates the changing approaches
to sacred themes in the Romantic
era. Diverse subjects reveal that the
Romantic artists’ engagement with
religion was not a naive reversion
to mysticism, but rather a means to
extend their cultural relevance. John
Martin’s The Deluge (1834) and William
Blake’s Jerusalem: The Emanation
of the Great Albion (1804–20), for
instance, show the Romantics directly
addressing the place of religion by
individualizing biblical themes
and religious experience. Closely
connected is the section on “The
Literary Impulse,” which features an
array of works inspired by literature,
including classical mythology and
modern poetry. Henry Fuseli’s Dido
(1781), Delacroix’s illustration for
Goethe’s Faust (1827), Géricault’s
lithographs inspired by Lord Byron
(1823), and Blake’s illustrations for
Dante (1827) all illustrate a dynamic and
evolving relationship between word
and image in the Romantic period.
Romantic portraiture emphasized
the sitter’s psychological state, evoking
an empathetic relationship between
subject and viewer. The portraits on
view in “Beyond Likeness” exhibit
different styles and techniques, from
the expressive brushwork of Delacroix
and Thomas Lawrence to intimately
conceived medals by David d’Angers.
Also on view are early, poignant photographic
portrayals of such Romantic
figures as Victor Hugo and Charles
Baudelaire.
While many sections of the
exhibition explore the shifting
ideas and pictorial content that
preoccupied the Romantics, “The
Changing Role of the Sketch” shows
how technical processes changed in
tandem with widening ambitions
for art. Constable’s cloud studies and
Gustave Courbet’s Hunter on Horseback
4

Francisco de Goya,
Contra el bien general
(Against the Common
Good), from the series
Los desastres de la
guerra (Disasters of
War), 1810–20, published
1863. Etching
and aquatint. Yale
University Art Gallery,
Gift of Lois Severini
and Enrique Foster
Gittes, b.a. 1961
John Constable,
Hadleigh Castle, The
Mouth of the Thames—
Morning after a Stormy
Night, 1829. Oil on
canvas. Yale Center for
British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection
5

(ca. 1864) masterfully exemplify how
the Romantics blurred the boundaries
between the artistic sketch and the
finished composition. The sketch,
which favored direct perception over
highly constructed compositions,
would come to be reflected in a broad
range of developments in modern
art, from Impressionism to Abstract
Expressionism.
The Critique of Reason brings together
outstanding works from both Yale
museums’ collections—many of them
rarely on view—juxtaposed here in
new and compelling contexts. Within
the exhibition, much is revealed about
the art of the Romantic era, from
the recognition that portraiture no
longer belonged only to the aristocracy
to the ways that artists grappled
with photography and the mass
distribution of images. The Critique
of Reason presents a nuanced
understanding of works that bridge
a turbulent century and places the
Romantics at a watershed moment
between the Age of Enlightenment
and the modernity that followed the
Industrial Revolution.
William Blake, “And
One Stood forth . . .,”
from the series
Jerusalem: The
Emanation of the Great
Albion, 1804–20. Relief
etching printed in
orange with pen and
ink and watercolor
on wove paper. Yale
Center for British Art,
Paul Mellon Collection
6

Gustave Courbet,
Hunter on Horseback,
ca. 1864. Oil on canvas.
Yale University Art
Gallery, Gift of
J. Watson Webb,
b.a. 1907, and Electra
Havemeyer Webb
On View
March 6–July 26, 2015
Related Programming
Members’ Preview
Wednesday, March 4, 4:00–6:00 pm
Registration required; please call
203.432.9658.
Martin A. Ryerson Lecture,
Song without Words:
The Romantic Experience
Thursday, March 5, 5:30 pm
Exhibition Tours
Wednesday, March 11, 12:30 pm
Wednesday, March 18, 12:30 pm
Performance; Music, Poetry,
and Romanticism
Thursday, March 26, 5:30 pm
Gallery Talks
Friday, March 27, 1:30 pm
Wednesday, April 1, 12:30 pm
Wednesday, April 15, 12:30 pm
Exhibition organized by Elisabeth (Lisa)
Hodermarsky, the Sutphin Family Senior Associate
Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University
Art Gallery; Paola D’Agostino, the Nina and Lee
Griggs Assistant Curator of European Art, Yale
University Art Gallery; A. Cassandra Albinson,
Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for
British Art; Nina Amstutz, Postdoctoral Research
Associate, Yale Center for British Art; and Izabel
Gass, Graduate Research Assistant, Yale University
Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art. Made
possible by the Art Gallery Exhibition and
Publication Fund and the Robert Lehman, B.A. 1913,
Endowment Fund, as well as by Funds from the Yale
Center for British Art Program Endowment
7

Special Exhibition
Whistler in Paris, London, and Venice
Whistler in Paris, London, and Venice
is the first exhibition at the Yale
University Art Gallery dedicated to
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, one
of the most celebrated artists of the
nineteenth century. It examines
Whistler’s life and creative genius
through the lens of three of his earliest
and arguably most innovative sets of
etchings—the so-called French, Thames,
and Venice Sets—and features two of
Whistler’s original copper plates and
other didactic materials that explain
the artist’s etching and printing
processes. Over 100 objects from the
Gallery’s permanent holdings join more
than a dozen works from the collection
of the Yale Center for British Art,
uniting objects that have rarely been
exhibited alongside each other.
Mortimer Menpes,
Whistler: Monocle
Left Eye (Whistler No.
2), 1902–3. Etching
and drypoint. Private
collection
8
Born in Lowell, Massachusetts,
in 1834, raised in Saint Petersburg,
Russia, and educated for three years at
the United States Military Academy at
West Point, Whistler had a peripatetic
and cultured upbringing. During
these formative years, he realized that
he wanted to be an artist and began
training in drawing, first at the Imperial
Academy of Fine Arts in Russia and
then at West Point. He then studied
etching at the U.S. Coast Survey in
Washington, D.C., before dedicating
himself full time to art at age 21 and
leaving for Paris in 1855.
Though he never returned to the
country of his birth, Whistler always
identified as an American and reveled
in his status as an outsider, in both
nationality and artistic output.
As he matured as an artist, he began
to cast himself as the mercurial
butterfly—his signature soon
resembled a stylized version of
the insect—and to create what he
dubbed “art for art’s sake.” The sets
on view in the exhibition showcase
this artistic evolution and are
representative of three important
periods in Whistler’s life.
The first part of the exhibition
focuses on Whistler’s Parisian stay
and the influences and artists he
encountered there. Among the
works is a selection of etchings from
Twelve Etchings after Nature (1857–58;
published 1858), better known
as the French Set, Whistler’s first
published series and the first art
that he aggressively marketed. These
etchings reveal his commitment to
working directly from nature and
his close study of works by Diego
Velázquez, Rembrandt van Rijn, and
Johannes Vermeer. In Paris, Whistler
befriended artists associated with
the Realist and Impressionist
movements, including Edgar Degas,
Henri Fantin-Latour, and Édouard
Manet. Works by some of Whistler’s
cohort are also on view in the
exhibition.
In 1859 Whistler moved to London,
where he forged a name for himself as
an etcher and celebrity of the art world.
The foundation of the second part of the
exhibition is a complete set of A Series of
Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames
(1859–61; published 1871), commonly
called the Thames Set, which established
Whistler’s reputation as an etcher
par excellence. Its imagery consists
almost exclusively of the changing
urban waterscapes of the unsavory
commercial districts along the Thames

River, where Whistler lived and worked
during his early years in London.
Whistler’s etching sojourn in
late 1879 to Venice, where he tried to
recover his reputation and fortune
following a devastating bankruptcy,
is the focus of the exhibition’s third
section, which features selections
from the First Venice Set and Second
Venice Set (1879–80; published 1880
and 1886, respectively). In some of
these extraordinary prints, Whistler
captured the landscape dematerializing
behind shrouds of soft mist tinged by
fading twilight, as he had done earlier
in a series of oil paintings known as
the “Nocturnes,” one of several abstract
terms Whistler adopted to refer to a
painting’s mood rather than its subject.
While in Venice, he befriended a small
group of expatriate artists, whose work
is featured alongside Whistler’s in this
section of the exhibition.
The French, Thames, and Venice
Sets are important milestones in the
Etching Revival, which flourished
in Britain and abroad during the
Victorian era and absorbed members
of Whistler’s circle. The final section
of the exhibition explores the
influence of Whistler’s etchings on
his students and contemporaries—
including Mortimer Menpes, Childe
Hassam, Joseph Pennell, and John
Marin—who carried on the etching
tradition and delighted in the
expressive potential of the medium.
On View
January 30–July 19, 2015
Related Programming
Members’ Preview
Wednesday, January 28, 12:00 pm
Registration required; please call
203.432.9658.
Perfomance, Musical Arrangements that
Influenced Whistler
Thursday, January 29, 5:30 pm
Gallery Talk
Wednesday, February 18, 12:30 pm
Exhibition Tour
Friday, April 24, 1:30 pm
Exhibition organized by Heather Nolin, the Arthur
Ross Collection Research Associate and Project
Manager, Yale University Art Gallery. Made possible
by Mary and Frederic D. Wolfe, B.S. 1951
James Abbott McNeill
Whistler, Nocturne,
from the First Venice
Set, 1879–80. Etching
and drypoint. Yale
University Art Gallery,
Gift of Leonard C.
Hanna, Jr., Class of 1913
9

Conservation
Bec-Dida Day
David Smith’s brightly painted steel
sculpture Bec-Dida Day (1963) was
inspired by the exuberant birthday
parties for the artist’s daughters,
Rebecca and Candida. Working with
steel parts, Smith skillfully cut and
welded elements together, primed the
steel, and installed the work with other
sculptures on the hillside of his Bolton
Landing, New York, studio before
deciding to paint it with brilliant blue,
yellow, red, and black enamel and
automobile paints.
Over the decades, the painted
surfaces of the sculpture deteriorated
so severely that, in the 1990s, while the
work was in a private collection, it was
sandblasted to bare metal, reprimed,
and repainted. After the Yale University
Art Gallery acquired Bec-Dida Day, the
Conservation Department began an
evaluation of the sculpture’s materials.
The commercial paints used in the
second painting were durable, but
curators questioned whether they were
authentic to the original colors. For
the 2012 reopening of the expanded
Gallery, Bec-Dida Day was installed in
front of Street Hall on Chapel Street, as
a colorful indicator of the art inside. But
the sculpture was vandalized in 2013,
and repainting was required. Curators
and conservators began researching
new paint systems that would more
closely match the original paints
applied by Smith shortly before his
untimely death in 1965.
The David Smith Estate provided
color photographs taken by the artist
soon after he painted Bec-Dida Day at
Bolton Landing. Close examination
of the photographs revealed brushwork
and reflective qualities that
were clearly missing in the repainted
surfaces. However, because color photographs
themselves fade and shift in
color over time, the actual colors in the
photographs could be used only as a
general guide. Using a spectrophotometer,
conservation staff quantitatively
measured the original paint colors on
David Smith, Bec-Dida
Day, 1963. Steel. Yale
University Art Gallery,
Charles B. Benenson,
b.a. 1933, Collection.
Art © The Estate of
David Smith/Licensed
by VAGA, New York, N.Y.
10

a similarly painted steel sculpture by
Smith, Zig VII (1963), which is in the
collection of the Museum of Modern
Art, New York, and had not been subjected
to long-term outdoor exposure,
although the paint colors appeared
to have darkened and yellowed over
time. While she was a fellow in the
Conservation Department, Elena Torok
pursued further research and had a
eureka moment at the Smithsonian
Institution’s Archives of American
Art. There, she discovered a sketch
by Smith among the notes of his artist
friends Helen Frankenthaler and
Robert Motherwell, in which he clearly
indicated his intended palette for Bec-
Dida Day: Jamaica blue, yellow oxide,
red oxide, and gum black.
Research then shifted to paints
that were available in the mid-1960s,
including automobile paints that
Smith is known to have used. Thanks
to devoted and passionate classic-car
restorers, information on historic automobile
paint colors is readily available
online; however, color swatches from
the 1960s show a range of Jamaica
blues—from a sky blue to a deep sea
blue—and classic vehicles, such as the
1964 Ford Falcon, are painted in glittering
metallic paints that are a far cry
from what Smith would have used. So
conservators sought the assistance of
paint manufacturers who are familiar
with historic paint formulas and have
advised other museum conservators
in selecting accurate colors for painted
sculptures. Different colors and textures
are currently being tested in
anticipation of the reinstallation in
2015 of Bec-Dida Day, with colors much
closer to Smith’s original paints.
David Smith,
sketchbook page
documenting Bec-Dida
Day, 1963. Black and
blue ink on paper. The
Estate of David Smith,
New York. Microfilmed
by the Archives
of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution
[N/D Smith - D, Frame
0139]. Art © The
Estate of David Smith/
Licensed by VAGA,
New York, N.Y.
11

Programs
A History of Dutch Painting in Six Pictures
with John Walsh
John Walsh, b.a. 1961,
discusses Jan Steen’s
Card Players (ca. 1660),
from the Rose-Marie
and Eijk van Otterloo
collection
In fall 2013, the Yale University Art Gallery
presented a semester-long public lecture
series by John Walsh, b.a. 1961, titled Let
This Be a Lesson: Heroes, Heroines, and
Narrative in Paintings at Yale. In addition
to the audiences that attended the
lectures in New Haven, tens of thousands
have viewed the lectures online,
at artgallery.yale.edu/programs/lesson.
Building on this success, Walsh will
present six lectures, beginning on
January 23 and continuing through
February, that will explore the art of
the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth
century.
The lecture series coincides with
the display of a remarkable group of
30 Dutch and Flemish paintings from
the collection of Rose-Marie and Eijk
van Otterloo. These works are on view
alongside Netherlandish works from the
Gallery’s collection and important longterm
loans from Monica and Herbert
Schaefer. The installation has given
students and the public a delightful and
instructive view of this extraordinary
period in Dutch history.
After breaking away from their
Spanish Catholic overlords in 1581,
the ten northern provinces of the
Netherlands enjoyed a kind of economic
miracle. Not only did their production
of cloth, cheese, and other export
staples rise, but their location on the
Rhine and the North Sea also positioned
them to establish import and export
markets serving all of northern Europe.
Their blockade of Antwerp choked off
their main competition, and skilled
Flemish artisans came north over the
border by the thousands. Dutch shipyards
turned imported Baltic timber
into ships for a navy and a powerful
merchant fleet that sailed to the corners
of the earth, establishing trading
outposts and bringing back precious
goods. New banks and a stock market
for attracting investors supported all of
this new industry and trade.
The market for works of art expanded
rapidly. In his lectures, Walsh will
12

discuss how artists responded by
increasing their ranks and by devising
new subjects for paintings to supply a
growing class of well-to-do merchants
and financiers. Artists painted
dramatic seascapes, refined scenes of
everyday life, penetrating portraits,
imaginative scenes from the Bible and
classical mythology, breathtaking still
lifes, and richly detailed landscapes
and cityscapes. Walsh will examine
six paintings—some famous, others
much less well known—spanning 75
years. Each serves as a case study of
subject matter, technique, and artistic
intent, and each contributes to a
composite portrait of Dutch art in its
greatest flowering.
Walsh, Director Emeritus of the
J. Paul Getty Museum, is a specialist in
Dutch paintings and a former curator
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, and the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. He studied at Yale, the
University of Leiden in the Netherlands,
and Columbia University in New York,
where he received a ph.d. In addition
to the lecture series, he will teach an
undergraduate seminar on Dutch art
during the spring semester of 2015.
Each fall, Walsh works with Jessica
Sack, the Jan and Frederick Mayer
Senior Associate Curator of Public
Education, to train the Wurtele Gallery
Teachers, 17 Yale graduate students who
are responsible for the K–12 teaching at
the museum as well as other programs
involving youth and visitors with
special needs. He encourages close, slow
encounters with original works of art,
with unhurried observation and discussion
in small groups. During the lecture
series, he and Gallery staff will offer
sessions of this kind for members of
the audience. For more information on
this series and to register for the closelooking
sessions, please visit
artgallery.yale.edu/programs.
Related Programming
Lectures
Fridays at 1:30 pm
January 23–February 27
Before or after the lectures (at 12:30 pm
and 3:00 pm), visitors are invited to join
Gallery staff for a close look at related
works of art. Space is limited and registration
is required; to register, please
visit artgallery.yale.edu/programs.
Abraham Bloemaert,
The Deluge, ca. 1590–
95. Oil on canvas. Yale
University Art Gallery,
Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.,
Class of 1913, Fund
13

Education
New Haven Promise Interns
This past summer, the Yale University
Art Gallery hosted six New Haven
Promise interns. Cosponsored by Yale
University, the Community Foundation
for Greater New Haven, Yale–New Haven
Hospital, and Wells Fargo, New Haven
Promise grants merit scholarships based
on grades, attendance, and community
service to New Haven public high-school
students and graduates who go on to
attend one of Connecticut’s public institutions
of higher education.
The Gallery was fortunate to
welcome these students back for the
summer; having grown up in New
Haven, many of them remembered
visiting the Gallery on field trips.
Several students, in fact, went to the
Cooperative Arts and Humanities
High School, just two blocks away,
and attended class sessions in
the museum. They returned to
the Gallery because they loved
it and wanted a chance to better
understand how it operates. Other
students were less familiar with the
museum, remembering it fondly
from elementary school visits; they
returned to discover it anew.
Working in departments across
the museum, the interns assisted
with a wide range of projects over
the summer. Zanira Abubakar and
Paris Taft interned in the Education
Department and helped develop
new programs for toddlers and teens
(see pages 16–17). Isaac Bloodworth
and Shelby Simmons worked in the
Exhibitions Department, installing
works of art and learning about
collections management. In the
Department of Prints and Drawings,
Santos Oppenheimer conducted
research for the exhibition Vida
y Drama de México: Prints from the
Monroe E. Price and Aimée Brown Price
Collection. Isabella (Izzy) Rossi helped
with a range of textile projects in
the Conservation Department. Each
intern contributed significantly to the
work of their respective departments,
Ruth Barnes, the
Thomas Jaffe Curator
of Indo-Pacific Art,
and Shelby Simmons
discuss objects in
the exhibition East
of the Wallace Line:
Monumental Art from
Indonesia and New
Guinea
14

Santos Oppenheimer
in the James E. Duffy
Study Room for
Prints, Drawings, and
Photographs
learning a range of skills in the
process. By developing new programs,
conducting research, and installing
and conserving works of art, they also
became acquainted with the scope of
career paths museums have to offer.
In addition to their daily work, the
interns gathered every Wednesday
during the six-week program to learn
as a group. They looked closely at
original works of art and engaged in
conversation about their internships at
the Gallery, learning from the projects
and perspectives of their peers. The
interns also participated in talks with
curators and department heads to learn
about museum careers. The Wednesday
sessions, modeled in part on the
training for undergraduate Gallery
Guides, offered a window into museum
practices and the wealth of teaching
and learning opportunities available
to museum visitors. The sessions were
dynamic, thought-provoking, and
fun for interns and Gallery staff alike,
and the New Haven Promise scholars
brought with them unparalleled energy
and innovative ideas.
Isaac, Izzy, Paris, Santos, Shelby,
and Zanira taught Gallery staff a great
deal about the museum and New
Haven. They have expressed their
thanks for the opportunity to intern at
the Gallery, and in turn, everyone at the
museum is grateful for their hard work
and the inspiration they have provided.
This coming summer, the Gallery plans
to expand the internship program,
allowing more New Haven students to
work in their community.
15

Education
New After-School Teen Program
Teaching in museums grows more
exciting yet more complex with each
passing year, particularly as it relates
to engaging young students who have
come of age in the era of emails, text
messages, and tweets. How do art
museum educators, who aim to foster
dialogue around mostly inanimate
objects, engage with a generation of
students whose lives are so intertwined
with digital and social media?
This is one of the many questions
the Education Department at the Yale
University Art Gallery has been grappling
with in seeking, over the course of the
past year, to design a program to engage
teens in looking at and making art at the
museum. Launched in fall 2014, the new
after-school program was envisioned as a
time for New Haven teens to come together
to participate in the creative process
and in conversation with one another.
Plans for a teen program coalesced
during the summer of 2014, with
the critical input of the Education
Department’s two New Haven
Promise interns, Paris Taft and Zanira
Abubakar. Paris, a junior and Human
Development and Family Studies major
at the University of Connecticut, and
Zanira, a sophomore and Allied Health
Sciences major at the University of
Connecticut, both grew up in New
Haven; they graduated from Hill
Regional Career High School and
Cooperative Arts and Humanities High
School, respectively. Paris and Zanira
spent much of their summer internships
helping design the teen program
by conducting research on existing
teen programs in New Haven and at
other museums across the country.
To gather information about local
teen programs, Paris and Zanira surveyed
students from area high schools,
16
interviewed teachers who supervise
after-school clubs, and contacted local
organizations with teen programs.
Their research provided invaluable
insight into the broader teen
community in New Haven, helping
Gallery educators get a sense of how
a program might be structured so as
to complement—not compete with—
existing programs. The local survey
data also helped gauge interest in the
Gallery’s teen initiative and inform
its content. Sessions during the fall
semester, for instance, emphasized the
process of art making because of the
feedback collected through the survey.
In addition to providing rich local
perspectives, the interns researched
teen programs in museums across the
country, including well-established
programs at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum
of American Art in New York, and the
Bronx Museum of the Arts in New
York. Analysis of the strengths and
challenges of these programs provided

Wurtele Gallery
Teacher Tony Coleman
(in gray cap) speaks
with visiting New
Haven teens in the
exhibition East of
the Wallace Line:
Monumental Art
from Indonesia and
New Guinea
important information that was considered
when designing the Gallery’s
pilot initiative.
In September 2014, local teens
gathered at the Gallery to discuss the
upcoming year, and in October, the
program officially began with sessions
on Wednesday afternoons. The year is
structured around three seven-session
units, with a theme such as “portraiture”
or “painting” serving as the loose
focus of each unit. During each session,
the teens spend time looking at and
responding creatively to related works
in the collection.
Gallery educators continue to reflect
on and tweak elements of the program,
and the initial response to the initiative
has been quite positive. Importantly,
Paris and Zanira are as integral to the
implementation of the program as they
were to the planning process, returning
to the Gallery to work with the teens
and seeing many of their own ideas
come to fruition. The Education staff is
deeply grateful for the interns’ contributions
over the past year and is thrilled
to see the new program realized after
months of research and planning.
For more information about the
after-school teen program, please visit
artgallery.yale.edu/education/teens.
17

Staff News
New Staff at the Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery is
pleased to announce the arrival of
three new staff members: La Tanya
Autry, the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow
in the Department of Modern and
Contemporary Art; Frauke Josenhans,
the Horace W. Goldsmith Assistant
Curator of Modern and Contemporary
Art; and Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, the
first Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman–
Joan Whitney Payson Fellow in the
Education Department. Each of these
scholars brings to the museum a wealth
of knowledge and experience, with new
ways to look closely at the collection.
La Tanya Autry comes to the Gallery
from the University of Delaware, where
she is a ph.d. candidate studying
themes of identity, race, and memory
in photography. As the Marcia Brady
Tucker Fellow, La Tanya will support
class and student visits to the James E.
Duffy Study Room for Prints, Drawings,
and Photographs. She has already begun
work with director Jock Reynolds on the
forthcoming exhibition and publications
of photographs by Donald Blumberg,
which the Gallery recently acquired.
Frauke Josenhans comes to New
Haven from Los Angeles, where she was
a curatorial assistant at the Robert Gore
Rifkind Center for German Expressionist
Studies at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art (LACMA) and held a
yearlong internship in the paintings
department at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Originally from Germany, she studied
in France with a focus on nineteenth- to
twentieth-century German landscape
painting. Most recently, Frauke worked
on two exhibitions at LACMA of works
by contemporary German artist Hans
Richter. Frauke is currently working on
several installations in the Charles B.
Benenson and the Sharon and Thurston
Twigg-Smith galleries of modern and
contemporary art, including an installation
of Alberto Giacometti’s works that
brings together several of his paintings,
prints, and sculptures.
Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye received
her ph.d. from the University of
Southern California, where she studied
contemporary Mexican artists’ reinterpretations
of Precolumbian images.
In addition to facilitating access to
the Gallery’s collection for students,
faculty, and visiting scholars, Jennifer
will be researching the influence of
Precolumbian art on the work and collection
of Josef and Anni Albers, whose
works are in the Gallery’s collection.
Left to right: La Tanya
Autry, Jennifer
Reynolds-Kaye, and
Frauke Josenhans
18

Publication
Lee Friedlander’s Dressing Up: Fashion Week NYC
This spring, the Yale University Art
Gallery releases Dressing Up: Fashion
Week NYC, the latest in the museum’s
series of publications with renowned
photographer Lee Friedlander. In this
collection of candid photographs,
Friedlander ventures into unfamiliar
territory, turning his eye to the rarefied
world of fashion and revealing precisely
what is commonplace about it: behind
the glamorous spectacle of the runway
are many people hard at work.
The photographs in the volume
were originally commissioned in 2006
by Kathy Ryan, director of photography
at the New York Times Magazine.
Ryan had previously worked with
Friedlander on several projects, including
others in which he had documented
people at work—from opera singers to
telemarketers. As Ryan remembers it,
Friedlander was interested in gaining
access to a location that otherwise would
have been off-limits to his probing lens.
Garnering special access for the photographer
was difficult, but the results paid
off; Friedlander spent time backstage at
the Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Calvin
Klein, Zac Posen, Oscar de la Renta, and
Proenza Schouler shows. Although some
press photographers are allowed backstage
at Fashion Week, they are ushered
out when the show begins. The unprecedented
access that the Times was able
to coordinate for Friedlander allowed
him to keep shooting long after the
press photographers were asked to leave,
capturing the most hectic moments in a
space that is usually restricted.
“It was a fun project,” Ryan says. “The
prep starts at an incredible speed, they’re
dressing the models, they’re changing
them, there’s chaos everywhere, and it
just was a perfect environment for Lee
to be in the middle of. . . . The point was
seeing how that kind of chaotic environment
would be organized by Lee’s eye.”
The resulting images, many of which
are published here for the first time,
depict a flurry of toiling stylists, dressers,
makeup artists, photographers, and models—all
of them preparing, but not quite
prepared, for an image to be taken.
In addition to over 50 candid blackand-white
photographs from the project,
the book includes a recent conversation
between Ryan and Friedlander, providing
insight into the artist’s experience in an
unfamiliar setting. Friedlander says he
had no idea what to expect backstage, but
the models were game for his scrutiny
and were so used to being photographed
that they didn’t even react to his presence.
Friedlander enjoyed the project, and
he was especially intrigued by the homemade
flash units and other paraphernalia
that the other photographers use to capture
the runway drama—some of which
made its way into Friedlander’s shots.
Ryan says selecting which photographs
to publish in the magazine
was easy: “Choosing the photos, that’s
always just a pleasure. Lee comes in
with the prints, we have a discussion
and we get to it pretty quickly. . . .
They’re beautiful pictures, they practically
lay themselves out.”
80 pages / 11 × 13 inches / 59 duotones /
Distributed by Yale University Press /
Price: $45, Members $36
Related Programming
Book Launch, Dressing Up: Fashion
Week NYC
Thursday, February 5, 5:30 pm
19

Special Exhibition
Odd Volumes: Book Art from
the Allan Chasanoff Collection
Drawn from a major collection given
to the Gallery by Allan Chasanoff, B.A.
1961, Odd Volumes showcases a selection
of experimental and innovative works
of book art from the 1960s to the present.
This student-curated exhibition, its
related programs, and the companion
exhibition at Artspace, CT (un)Bound,
offer a rare opportunity to discover the
world of book art.
Related Programming
Bookmaking Workshop:
Crafting the Codex
Friday, January 16, 12:00–3:00 pm
Registration required; to register,
please visit artgallery.yale.edu/programs.
Conversation, Cover to Cover:
A Discussion among Book Artists
Saturday, January 31, 1:00 pm
Exhibition and publication organized by Andrew
Hawkes, M.F.A. candidate; Ashley James, Ph.D.
candidate; Jessica Kempner, B.A. 2014; Sinclaire
Marber, MC ‘15; Elizabeth Mattison, B.A. 2014, M.A.
2014; and Colleen McDermott, SY ‘15, under the
mentorship of Gallery staff. Made possible by the
Jane and Gerald Katcher Fund for Education; the John
F. Wieland, Jr., B.A. 1988, Fund for Student Exhibitions;
and the Nolen-Bradley Family Fund for Education.
Andrew Hawkes, M.F.A.
candidate, begins a
tour of the exhibition
Left: Jessica Kempner,
B.A. 2014, discusses
one of the works on
view
Right: Allan Chasanoff,
B.A. 1961, with Helen
Kauder, Executive
Director of Artspace
(center), and a visitor,
at the opening
reception
20

Above: Visitors enjoy
works by more than
80 artists
Left: Student curators
(right) applaud their
mentors at the Gallery:
Gabriella Svenningsen,
Museum Assistant
(far left), and Pamela
Franks, the Seymour
H. Knox, Jr., Curator
of Modern and
Contemporary Art
and Deputy Director
for Exhibitions,
Programming, and
Education (left)
Right: CT (un) Bound, a
companion exhibition
at Artspace
21

Membership
Free Membership Program
Members of the Yale University Art
Gallery join fellow art lovers, students,
alumni, artists, and others in exploring
all that the Gallery has to offer. The
free membership program extends the
Gallery’s philosophy of free admission
one step further, giving everyone who
wants to belong the opportunity to join.
Benefits of membership include a free
subscription to the Gallery’s triannual
magazine, making members among the
first to learn about upcoming exhibitions,
programs, and events. Members also
receive the weekly eNews and invitations
to exhibition openings and programs.
The Gallery’s Bookstore offers members a
20 percent discount on all purchases and
provides information about special sales
throughout the year, and the Information
Desk validates parking at the Chapel-York
Parking Garage, for a flat rate of $5.
To join the free membership program,
visit artgallery.yale.edu/members. For
more information about membership or
to register for upcoming events, email
art.members@yale.edu or call Linda
Jerolmon, Membership Manager, at
203.432.9658.
Suzanne Boorsch,
the Robert L. Solley
Curator of Prints and
Drawings, gives a
members’ tour of Vida
y Drama de México:
Prints from the Monroe
E. Price and Aimée
Brown Price Collection
Reciprocal Membership
Another exciting benefit of membership
is participation in the College and
University Art Museums Reciprocal
Program, which offers Gallery members
complimentary admission or discounts
to 53 national art museums. New to
the list of museums in the reciprocal
program are the Bellarmine Museum
of Art and Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery,
Fairfield University, Connecticut;
Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville,
Maine; Fred Jones, Jr., Museum of
Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman;
Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles;
Goldstein Museum of Design, University
of Minnesota, Saint Paul; Princeton
University Art Museum, New Jersey;
and Ruth Funk Center for Textile
Arts, Florida Institute of Technology,
Melbourne.
For the complete list of
participating academic museums,
and to see how other colleges and
universities use their collections for
teaching and enjoyment, please visit
artgallery.yale.edu/reciprocal-membership.
Members’ Trivia Night
Thursday, January 8, 5:30–7:00 pm
How well do you know the Gallery?
Come and find out—and learn something
new! Members are invited to join
us for an evening of fun, facts, and
refreshments. Explore the Gallery and
test your knowledge of art, art history,
and interesting facts about the museum.
Registration is required; please RSVP to
art.members@yale.edu or 203.432.9658.
Members’ Reception
Friday, February 27, 2:30 pm
Join the members in celebrating John
Walsh, b.a. 1961, Director Emeritus of the
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, at the
conclusion of his lecture series, A History
of Dutch Paintings in Six Pictures (see
pages 12–13).
Members’ Preview Tours
Join us for these members-only
exhibition tours. Registration is
required and space is limited; please
email art.members@yale.edu or call
203.432.9658.
Whistler in Paris, London, and Venice
Wednesday, January 28, 12:00 pm
Heather Nolin, the Arthur Ross
Collection Research Associate and Project
Manager, Yale University Art Gallery,
offers a tour of the exhibition.
The Critique of Reason:
Romantic Art, 1760–1860
Wednesday, March 4, 4:00–6:00 pm
Attend a special preview of the first major
collaborative exhibition organized by the
Gallery and the Yale Center for British
Art. See the exhibition before it opens to
the public and enjoy informal discussions
with the curators in the galleries.
22

Visiting
Plan Your Visit
Free and open to the public
1111 Chapel Street
New Haven, Connecticut
203.432.0600
artgallery.yale.edu
Leonor Barroso,
Director of Visitor
Services (right), and
Perry Obee, Visitor
Services Assistant
(center), are among
the friendly staff at
the Information Desk
waiting to greet you at
the Gallery.
Group/school tours: 203.436.8831
Membership: 203.432.9658
Bookstore: 203.432.0601
Gallery Hours and Holidays
Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am–5:00 pm
Thursday until 8:00 pm (Sept.–June)
Saturday–Sunday, 11:00 am–5:00 pm
Closed Mondays and major holidays,
including New Year’s Day, January 1;
Independence Day, July 4; Thanksgiving
Day, November 26; and Christmas Eve
and Christmas Day, December 24–25
Tours
In addition to the free drop-in tours
listed in the calendar, free group tours
can be arranged in advance by visiting
artgallery.yale.edu/groups. Spanishlanguage
tours are available upon
request; use the online form and note
“Spanish language” in the Themes and
Requirements section.
New Traffic Patterns for Cars
The Quinnipiac Bridge/Interstate 95
construction and Downtown Crossing/
Route 34 East construction projects,
part of the City of New Haven’s multiyear
plan to transform the downtown area,
are currently underway and impacting
traffic patterns. Please pay close
attention to exit and directional
signage, as detours and new routes
are continually changing.
Parking
In addition to the metered spaces on
nearby streets, which accept credit cards
and payment by smartphone app, there
is a conveniently located garage at 150
York Street, which offers discount parking
to members. Members can bring
their parking ticket to the Gallery’s
Information Desk for validation, which
lowers the price to a flat rate of $5.
Bookstore
Members enjoy a 20 percent discount
on publications and merchandise,
including T-shirts, caps, and tote bags.
Stay informed about special promotions
and flash sales by joining the free
membership program or becoming a
friend on Facebook.
Yale Center for British Art
The Yale Center for British Art’s Louis
Kahn building will be closed to the public
for renovation from January 1, 2015,
through early February 2016. The project
will focus on the refurbishment of all
public galleries and the lecture hall.
During this time, students and scholars
can gain access to the Center by special
advance arrangement. Select works from
the Center’s collection will be presented
at the Gallery in the exhibition The
Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860,
on view from March 6 to July 26, 2015,
and highlights from the Center will
be installed at the Gallery throughout
the course of the renovation. For more
information about the renovation, visit
britishart.yale.edu/bcp.
23

Yale University Art Gallery
P.O. Box 208271
New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8271