This comprehensive renovation and expansion reinvigorates the Yale University Art Gallery, showcasing the encyclopedic permanent collection of one of America’s most venerable university art museums and rationalizing the museumgoer’s experience. The design celebrates the stylistic distinctions of three historic buildings – Street Hall (Peter Bonnett Wight, 1865), the Old Yale Art Gallery (Egerton Swartwout, 1928) and the iconic Louis Kahn building (1953) – and weaves them into a cohesive state-of-the-art museum environment dedicated to the display of art. One hundred fifty years of unfortunate renovations and adaptations have been reversed, non-museological functions have been relocated to other buildings, and a new rooftop addition accommodates contemporary art and temporary exhibitions. Rationalizing the buildings in section, the design creates a comprehensible experience that allows the visitor to engage the art in a continuous, approximately chronological sequence, or to encounter the art serendipitously. For the first time in its history, the Gallery occupies all three building and is thus able to showcase significantly more of its permanent collection at one time than ever before.
Throughout the galleries of each building, architecture and art are harmonized. For example, classical sculpture has been relocated to a gallery whose immense Roman arched windows flood the space with light. The newly expanded museum contains 69,975 square feet of exhibition space (compared to 40,266 square feet prior to the expansion), and occupies the length of one-and-a-half city blocks to meet the programmatic and spatial needs for exhibition as well as academic instruction. A new glass stairway and elevator unify the circulation patterns of the three buildings into one logical flow, providing a seamless visitor experience. The placement of temporary exhibitions in a new rooftop structure atop the historic buildings draws the visitor through the collection to the new suite of galleries and a new rooftop sculpture terrace. Clad in zinc and glass, this addition is set back from the perimeter of the roof in order to minimize its visibility from the street, thereby preserving the original façade of the 1928 building. The variety of spaces and experiences in the newly created three-building continuum have enabled the Gallery’s director and curatorial staff to organize the collections in a logical and uninterrupted sequence, in spaces that complement and enhance the art they contain.
The three buildings have been returned to their original purity and integrity through restoration of the historic interior architectural elements and finishes and the historic facades of all buildings. The first phase of the project, the renovation of the Kahn Building, completed in 2006, restored many features of the architect’s original design, upgraded outmoded systems, and revealed spacious, unobstructed vistas in accordance with Kahn’s original vision. With the recent final completion of the project, the thermal performance of the exterior walls and windows of the two older buildings have been upgraded and new mechanical systems have been installed to provide greater temperature and humidity control and establish a state-of-the-art museum environment.