Art Resources and Collections
Digital Lab
The Digital Lab of the School of Art consists of Macintosh®-based facilities for undergraduates and graduate students from all areas of study. Each department has its own computer lab for graduate work, and there is an undergraduate graphic design lab as well. For general classroom use there is a computer lab that includes scanners and printers.
Painting and printmaking students have an Epson 7600 set up for digital printing and transparencies for printmaking processes. Sculpture students have both monochrome and color laser printers as well as video editing stations. Graphic design students can use HP monochrome printers for proofs, Ricoh or Canon color laser printers for smaller work and books, and HP Designjet printers for poster production. Photography students have an Imacon scanner for digitally scanning negatives and Epson 9800 printers for digital photo printing.
The graduate facilities include Epson 7600 wide-format printers, 11 x 17 scanners, and additional equipment based on the needs of the students in the department. Supplemental equipment includes laser printers, video editing stations, and slide scanners.
Digital projectors and equipment are available for overnight loan. All students who work digitally are expected to have their own portable FireWire hard drive to store personal work.
All computer facilities are available to students twenty-four hours a day; departmental access is required for some labs. The labs are supported by digital technology team members and have individual student monitors as well.
Digital Media Center for the Arts
The Digital Media Center for the Arts (DMCA) at 149 York Street is a multimedia facility that was created to establish connections between traditional art and the computer age. The Center was conceived by and serves the several arts departments and institutions at Yale. Beyond providing classroom and laboratory facilities, the DMCA provides instruction and equipment that allow faculty and students in all arts disciplines to discover and create in the diverse fields of electronic media. Advanced technologies, staff expertise, and interdisciplinary approaches make the DMCA an ideal auxiliary for Yale’s arts community.
Ralph Mayer Learning Center
Through the generosity of the late Bena Mayer, a painter and the widow of Ralph Mayer, author of The Artist’s Handbook of Techniques and Materials, The Painter’s Craft, and A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, archives related to her husband’s research and writings have been given to the Yale School of Art for the establishment of the Ralph Mayer Learning Center. The purpose of the Center is to support research and writing on the use of materials, and for the study of artists’ techniques in the field of drawing and painting. A seminar entitled “Techniques,” which has been part of the curriculum of the Yale School of Art for over fifty years, is augmented by the Center.
Original Mayer manuscripts and memorabilia are included in the collection of the Yale University Arts Library and available on a noncirculating basis to members of the Yale community and the public. The School offers to answer in writing inquiries regarding the use of artists’ materials. Requests for information about this service should be addressed to Sam Messer, Associate Dean, Yale School of Art, Ralph Mayer Learning Center, PO Box 208339, New Haven CT 06520-8339.
Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery at 1111 Chapel Street is the oldest university art museum in the Western hemisphere, having been founded in 1832 when the patriot-artist John Trumbull gave more than one hundred of his paintings to Yale. Since then its collections have grown to number over 185,000 objects from all periods of the history of art from ancient Egyptian times to the present.
Gallery holdings comprise a world-renowned collection of American paintings and decorative arts; outstanding collections of Greek and Roman art; early Italian paintings; European, Asian, and African art from diverse cultures; art of the ancient Americas; the Société Anonyme Collection of early-twentieth-century European and American art; and Impressionist, modern, and contemporary works.
The main building of the Gallery, designed by the distinguished American architect Louis I. Kahn, was completed in 1953. Although it was the first modern-style building on the Yale campus, it harmonizes with the Gallery’s Italian Gothic building of 1928 by Egerton Swartwout, with which it is connected on the first and third floors. The Gallery is currently embarking on the next phase of its expansion project, scheduled for completion in 2011; the project includes the renovation of the Swartwout building and Street Hall, the adjacent historic structure that housed the original art school.
While focusing on its role as a center for scholarly research in the history of art and museum training for graduate and undergraduate students at Yale, the Gallery also maintains an active schedule of public education programming.
Yale Center for British Art
Presented to the University by Paul Mellon (Class of 1929), the Yale Center for British Art at 1080 Chapel Street houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. The collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, rare books, and manuscripts reflects the development of British art, life, and thought from the Elizabethan period onward. On view are masterpieces by leading artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, J. M. W. Turner, and John Constable, as well as major figures from Europe and America who lived and worked in Britain. British sporting art, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Camden Town School, and the Bloomsbury Group are also well represented, together with more recent twentieth-century artists.
One of the Center’s greatest treasures is the building itself. Opened to the public in 1977, the Yale Center for British Art is the last building designed by internationally acclaimed American architect Louis I. Kahn. The structure integrates the dual functions of study center and gallery while providing an environment for works of art that is appropriately simple and dignified. It stands across the street from Kahn’s first major commission, the Yale University Art Gallery (1953).
The Center offers a year-round schedule of exhibitions and educational programs, including films, concerts, lectures, tours, and special events. It also provides numerous opportunities for scholarly research, such as residential fellowships. Academic resources of the Center include a reference library of 20,000 volumes, accessible on Orbis; a photo archive of 200,000 photographs, with a computerized index; a conservation laboratory; and a study room for examining prints, drawings, rare books, and manuscripts from the collection.
An affiliated institution in London, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, awards grants and fellowships, publishes academic titles, and sponsors Yale’s first credit-granting undergraduate study abroad program, Yale-in-London.
Libraries
The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, linking the ground floors of Rudolph Hall and the Loria Center at 180 and 190 York Street, serves as the primary collection for the study of art, architecture, and drama production at Yale. The collection, one of the most comprehensive in North America, holds approximately 125,000 volumes on art, architecture, painting, sculpture, graphic design, urban planning, and theater. It includes the Arts of the Book Collection, which has volumes on the book arts, fine printing, typography, and book illustration, as well as the Visual Resources Collection, whose Digital Library holds more than 250,000 images to support teaching and research across a range of discipines in the arts and humanities. The Haas Family Arts Library contains important reference works, monographs, and exhibition catalogs; periodicals, including nearly 500 current subscriptions; and a growing suite of digital resources, including online periodicals, databases, and indexes. Sterling Memorial Library, Yale’s central research library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Classics Library at Phelps Gate also contain many volumes on art and architecture, as well as related collections in archaeology, anthropology, film, bibliography, history, and literature.
The Arts Library is part of the Yale University Library, one of the world’s leading research libraries, holding approximately thirteen million volumes in all media, from ancient papyri to early printed books to online databases. To learn more, visit the library’s Web site at www.library.yale.edu/arts.
