Art historians, curators, and connoisseurs often pose the question, Is it any good? evoking a sense of quality manifest in canonical works of art. By contrast, when building a collection of 18th-century prints for research, library founders W.S. and Annie Burr Lewis envisioned an essentially archival visual collection. Yet, aesthetic, material, and technical attributes are integral to understanding the power of visual art and artifacts to communicate the histories they document. Asking Is it any good? This exhibition explores the intersections of quality and documentary value. For the Lewises

Visit the Beinecke Library website for daily hours and other visitor information. It is hard to miss the role of art in protest these days. Bold acts of performativity; vulnerable bodies marching and dancing in the streets; songs, chants, posters, banners, murals, new monuments raised and old ones brought crashing down. Alongside grief, fear, and anger, there is a collective exuberance here, the discovery of power in the aesthetics of resistance. It is this moment of unforeseen power in beauty mingling with defiance—art merging with protest—that breathes life into such images, infusing

The portraits featured in this exhibit are drawn from a larger series of photographs by Tanya Marcuse (MFA ’90). This exhibit is part of the university-wide 50 Women at Yale 150 celebration, which aims “to showcase the depth of women’s contributions to Yale and to the world, to celebrate women at the university, and to inspire thoughtful conversation about the future of women at Yale and in the larger society.”