The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library

The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library opened in August 2008. Located at the corner of York and Chapel Streets, the Haas Family Arts Library is the latest facility in the Yale University Library system. As part of a building complex consisting of the newly restored Rudolph Hall (formerly the Art and Architecture Building) and the new Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art, the Haas Family Arts Library spans both structures and serves as the physical and symbolic "bridge" between them. Since its opening in August 2008, there have been 134,000 visits to the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, a remarkable number and testimony to the vital importance of its collections and services.

Over a decade in the planning, and designed by the New York architectural firm of Gwathmey Siegel Associates as part of the new arts complex, the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library fulfills a unique vision. By occupying spaces in both Rudolph Hall and the Loria Center, the Haas Arts Library spaces embody both the spirit of architect Paul Rudolph's 1963 mid-century masterpiece and the best of contemporary library design.

As Allen Townsend, Director of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library puts it, "the Library fleshes out in the built environment Rudolph's original program for his building [and people now move] through the spaces in the way the architect would want them to." In some ways, the expanded Library spaces exceed historical expectations, as they are now replete with a soaring three-story atrium flooding the spaces with natural light and providing an open ambience of particular beauty, a variety of furnishings combining contemporary pieces and ones of or replicating Rudolph's own designs, sufficient and state-of-the art shelving and other storage facilities, and the incorporation of a special collections reading room and dedicated exhibition spaces.

The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, named to honor the generosity of Candice J. and Robert B. Haas '69, serves the Yale community and especially the arts area at Yale: the School of Architecture, the School of Art, the School of Drama, and the Department of the History of Art. It serves as the primary research library for the Yale University Art Gallery and also extends the art information resources of the Reference Library of the Yale Center for British Art. Collections and staff from the formerly separate Art and Architecture Library, Arts of the Book, Visual Resources Center, and the Drama Library are now housed under one roof, where the staff and readers enjoy a variety of new study spaces and new staff offices.

The integration of immensely important and unique special collections into a single library site is a hallmark of the Haas Family Arts Library design program. As a result, the Yale community is offered new and unparalleled opportunities to teach and learn about the arts from a diversity of objects and primary source materials. The special collections also complement the reference and circulating collections to create one of the largest academic art libraries in the country. Along with the Visual Resources digital image collections, the resources on offer at or through the services of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library are among the richest of their kind in a university setting.

Exhibition Program

A long-standing desire of the Arts Library staff has been to expand and enrich the exhibition program. Library exhibitions serve two equally important purposes: they increase the visibility and public awareness of the truly exceptional library collections of Yale University, and they provide teaching and learning opportunities both formal and informal. The design for the Haas Family Arts Library took into account the need for a state-of-the-art exhibition program. Located downstairs and adjacent to the atrium is the William H. Wright Special Collections Exhibition Area, generously supported by William H. Wright II, '82. The Wright Exhibition Area has proved an excellent addition to the library spaces and programming.

A current example of the imaginative exhibition programming made possible in the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library and is the Spring 2009 "Collections in Conversation: Theatre," currently on display in the William H. Wright Special Collections Exhibition Area. It is the first in a series of three exhibits featuring the major holdings of the Arts Library Special Collections through the lens of a single discipline.

According to Arts Library staff, the innovative idea guiding the exhibition is to introduce students, faculty and others to the interconnections among various Arts Special Collections by showing how the history and practice of theatre draws from architecture, art history, arts of the book, and drama itself. The placement of items from the Yale Rockefeller Theatrical Print Collection, the Puppetry Collection, the Faber Birren Collection of Books on Color, the Bookplate Collection and selected artists' books, points to the numerous possibilities of interdisciplinary research, one of the hallmarks of Yale education and scholarship.

^{Photographs © Harold Shapiro}