Exhibitions
Exhibition News
Friday, October 25, 2024 - 12:00pm to Monday, March 10, 2025 - 12:00pm
This multimedia exhibit explores key aspects of Yale’s own Charles E. Ives, Yale College 1898. Learn about the innovative composer, his family, and his profound impact on American music in the 20th century and beyond. The exhibit is on view in the hallway video screens and exhibition cases in front of the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library. Curated by Suzanne Lovejoy, Music Librarian for Research and Access Services, and James Sinclair, Executive Editor, Charles Ives Society
Monday, October 14, 2024 - 8:00am to Sunday, April 20, 2025 - 5:00pm
“The Scarcity of Desire: Sappho’s Encounter with the Modernist Imagination” interrogates how modernist interpretations of Sappho’s poetics have become integral to our contemporary understanding of the elusive poet. Sappho has been many things for many people throughout her disorderly reception: the only woman among nine lyric poets canonized in antiquity, a spurned lover driven to suicide by the boatman Phaon, and a queer icon whose homeland boasts credit for the word “lesbian.” Creative reuses of Sappho date back to antiquity, but the early twentieth century witnessed a particularly fervent
Monday, October 14, 2024 - 8:00am to Sunday, April 20, 2025 - 5:00pm
“Who Shot the Tiger?: Performing Imperialism in India” explores how tiger hunts recur in nineteenth-century British visual culture. Appropriated from Indian courtly tradition, colonial depiction of tiger hunts enforced British imperial power even as the transformation of these objects across time became the Empire’s undoing. Tracing the emergence of this motif into the English cultural consciousness, questions of the archive’s complicity in imperialism arise. The violence embedded in representations of the hunt is perpetuated by materials held in Yale’s collections. Still, the objects in this
Friday, September 27, 2024 - 8:30am to Friday, January 31, 2025 - 4:30pm
Pearls figure prominently in pictures of celebrated and imagined figures across the 18th century. As jewelry, as embellishments to the body and dress, or set in precious objects, pearls accessorize, highlight, colonize, and perform. Drawing from materials in the Lewis Walpole Library this exhibition will explore the “paradox of pearls” by considering how the jewel’s varied and often contradictory meanings appear in period images and how practices from the past connect us to the powerful presence of pearls today. Curated by Laura Engel, Professor, Duquesne University
Monday, September 9, 2024 - 9:00am to Sunday, May 11, 2025 - 5:00pm
The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) was architect Louis I. Kahn‘s last design. Founded by Paul Mellon ‘29 for the study and display of British art, the YCBA was the first U.S. museum to incorporate retail store fronts at street level. Inside the museum, Kahn’s use of daylight and natural materials reached its apotheosis. To celebrate the YCBA’s reopening in spring 2025, this exhibition presents photographs, letters, and sketches from Yale’s repositories to illuminate YCBA’s history and architectural significance. Curated by Kathy Winsor Bohlman, Architecture Records Archivist; Jessica
Wednesday, August 21, 2024 - 9:00am to Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 5:00pm
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Bioinformatics Support Hub at the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, “Data as Art” invites visitors to explore the aesthetic potential of scientific data, challenging the conventional perception of data as purely objective and highlighting its capacity to inspire artistic expression and creativity. The data visualizations and representations on exhibit—by Yale students, researchers, clinicians, and staff—transcend their scientific origins, revealing the inherent beauty and interpretative depth within data. Curated by Terry Dagradi, Sofia Fertuzinhos Ph.D
Sunday, August 18, 2024 - 9:00am to Sunday, March 2, 2025 - 5:00pm
“Amnesia”—a 1986 work of interactive science fiction—was an early attempt to bring video games into the realm of literary art by translating a novelist’s script into a medium that readers could only experience by interacting with a computer. Visitors can play the game on workstations in the Hanke Gallery in Sterling Memorial Library and in Bass Library, using Emulation-as-a-Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) software. Curator’s Talk and Exhibit Opening Reception is on Oct. 1, 2024, 4:30-6 p.m.
Thursday, July 25, 2024 - 12:00am to Tuesday, January 28, 2025 - 12:00am
Opening Reception: Thurs., Sept. 26, 5-7 p.m. “In the First Person” is the first large-scale public exhibition of footage from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Excerpts from 19 video testimonies present the experiences of survivors and witnesses to the atrocities and genocide committed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Also on display are books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and documents from Yale Library collections.