The New Athens of America?

Yale's $600 million plan to upgrade its arts-and-culture infrastructure will transform the center city



Business New Haven 08/21/2006 by Sharon Cohen

In 1832, the American patriot and artist John Trumbull, whose works of art include "Declaration of Independence," "Surrender at Yorktown" and "Washington Resigning His Commission," which hang in the U.S. Capitol, donated to Yale College more than 100 paintings of the American Revolution. The result was the creation of the first college art museum in the United States.

It also began a tradition of strong support for the arts that continues to this day at Yale. So strong, in fact, that next month Yale will kick off a major capital campaign to raise $500 million for arts infrastructures and an additional $100 million for fellowship and programmatic initiatives.

When Richard C. Levin became president of Yale in 1993, one of his objectives was enhancing the university's tradition of cultural leadership. Since the mid-'90s, a team including Yale administrators, deans of the arts schools, chairs of the art history department and librarians have worked to develop a far-reaching plan of renovation, restoration and new construction for the creation of an arts community centered around the locus of York and Chapel Streets.

According to Barbara A. Shailor, Yale's deputy provost for the arts and for the last three years chair of this committee, "It is the dream of this committee to position Yale University in the 21st century as the preeminent center for the arts in the United States." With Yale's intellectual and creative capital as well as its financial commitment, that dream may very likely come to fruition.

Levin himself notes that Yale has enormous strength in the visual and performing arts, and enjoys a historic leadership position among professional schools in the areas of art, architecture, music and drama. However, retaining that leadership position requires continuous reassessment and upgrades to facilities and programs.

"We have spectacular collections in our two art museums, and all of these programs were suffering from deficiencies in their facilities when I became president," Levin said. So far, under his direction, the school has made significant progress toward this objective by opening the new Gilmore Music Library and renovating Leigh Hall, Sprague Hall and the British Art Center.

The new plans come just six months after the announcement of an anonymous $100 million gift to Yale's School of Music that will provide free tuition in perpetuity to graduate music students - and, presumably, make New Haven a more attractive destination for many of the best young musicians in the world.

Now Yale is embarking on a second round of architectural projects: completing renovations to the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG); construction of a new art history building adjacent to the present School of Art & Architecture - which itself is slated for renovation and restoration. The two buildings combined will house a much-expanded and improved arts, drama, and architecture library.

In addition, a new building for the sculpture program is going up now on the block bounded by Chapel, Howe and Park streets and Edgewood Avenue. The final element includes a new home for the School of Drama and renovations to the Yale Repertory Theater.

Yale alumni are assuming major roles in the architectural projects. One of the first things that 1971 grad Duncan Hazard did when he first came to Yale was to visit the university art gallery. Now a partner at Polshek Partnership Architects, Hazard helped the arts committee develop its master plan and renovate YUAG. "It is simply a beautiful monument for art, for works from all different periods," he says.

In 1953, architect Louis I. Kahn designed the gallery as a space that would harmonize the beauty of great artworks with the ever-changing movement of life and the environment. Kahn's first significant commission, the gallery was his response to a new monumentality in post-World War II architecture.

In addition to many structural and technical innovations, such as the hollow tetrahedral concrete ceiling and floor slab design that store the mechanical and electrical systems, the building is itself a striking work of art. While the front of the building (the Chapel Street side) is brick, its west façade (overlooking the Art & Architecture Building) is a glass curtain.

This commission also allowed Kahn the freedom to experiment with the ideas he developed from trips to Greece, Rome and Egypt when he became convinced that modern architecture lacked the spiritual qualities of ancient buildings. Renovations to the 53-year-old YUAG, which is scheduled officially to reopen December 10, will include two new classrooms, modifications to the old art gallery (adjoining the 1928 Swartwout Building) entry from the steps on Chapel Street; relocation of the museum retail store from the Kahn side to the Swartwout lobby; exhibit-quality lighting in the Sculpture Hall for the display of ancient art; and renovated offices. Most importantly, because the building underwent so many ad hoc alterations over the years, it will be restored to its earlier integrity.

Charles Gwathmey, who in 1962 earned a master's in architecture from Yale and was a student and friend of renowned architect Paul Rudolph, former dean of the architecture school, today is working on project of a lifetime. His New York firm, Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, is responsible for two major components of the Yale arts project.

The first is the renovation and restoration to its original glory of the seven-story, 107,000-square-foot Rudolph Art & Architecture Building that was constructed in 1963. Over the years, the building endured a mysterious fire, a round of window replacements and many attempts to revamp the space to accommodate growing numbers of students. The other half of Gwathmey's challenge is building a new seven-story, 85,000-square-foot building to attach to the Rudolph structure, incorporating a three-story arts, drama and architectural library in between. The new zinc-and-limestone building will include 31 faculty offices, two lecture theaters with 175 and 65 seats, six seminar rooms, two classrooms, faculty lounge, ground-floor café and high-tech systems throughout. It is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2008.

Especially because of Rudolph's mentorship and friendship, Gwathmey says he feels honored to work on this assignment, which has kept him busier than ever for the past three years. He says he is particularly pleased to resurrect Rudolph's building and make a major statement about the importance of architecture at this time, as well as incorporate a new design that will complement Rudolph's creation and the other downtown Yale buildings. Gwathmey also says he imagines that if Rudolph were alive today, he would be pleased in return to see his student continue and enhance his work.

The other new element in the arts building project will be when the graduate and undergrad sculpture program is relocated to a new 51,000-square-foot building. The project includes a 3,000-square-foot working gallery on Edgewood Avenue and a 288-space parking structure on Howe Street. The project is under construction on a fast-track schedule with completion date set the summer of 2007.

The building will then serve as a temporary home for the School of Architecture, while the Rudolph Art & Architecture building is being completed. The sculpture program will take full occupancy after mid-2008.

Yale has long committed to making the arts accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds through its free galleries and museums, a tradition that the new structures will continue. Both YUAG and the British Art Center, which houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom, are open free to the public.

YUAG's collections number more than 100,000 objects, dating from antiquity to the present day and including Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Italian, European, Asian and African art with impressionist, modernist, and contemporary paintings and sculptures. There are also changing exhibits from a selection of over 30,000 master prints, drawings and photographs.

The 2003 book The Work of the University, published on the occasion of Levin's tenth anniversary as Yale president, stressed his commitment to what is now taking place in downtown New Haven. "In every division of the arts and sciences and in every professional school - we aspire to excellence," Levin said, "and in most of them we stand among the world's leaders."

He concluded that no entity can excel in every area and wrote of Yale's need to continue shaping itself by an "aspiration to excellence" rather than a "compulsion to comprehensiveness."

The transformation that will be occurring over the next decade in Yale cultural presence in downtown New Haven exemplifies the university's continuing dedication to the arts since Trumbull first donated his paintings nearly two centuries ago.