Benjamin West, Queen Charlotte, 1777, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

NEW HAVEN, CONN.- When the Yale Center for British Art reopened to the public, after completing the third phase of an important multi-year building conservation project, visitors can experience not only a renewed masterpiece of modern architecture by Louis I. Kahn, but also a freshly reimagined installation of the Center’s collections. More than five hundred works from the Center’s holdings, largely the gift of the institution’s founder, Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929), are being displayed in the newly renovated and reconfigured galleries on the second and fourth floors. 

“The reinstallation puts British art in a global context, tracing the relationship between art and Britain’s imperial ambitions from the sixteenth century to the present day,” said Matthew Hargraves, Chief Curator of Art Collections and Head of Collections Information and Access. “Far from being insular, the new hang shows the range and depth of British art, how much it was shaped by artists from across the globe, and how it was constantly being reinvented in response to Britain’s changing fortunes. Above all, it seeks to show how British art defined a nation that shaped the modern world.” 

 Canaletto, Warwick Castle (detail), 1748–1749, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. 

Developed by a team of curators led by Scott Wilcox, the Center’s Deputy Director for Collections, and Hargraves, this new installation presents the complex story of the development of British art from the time of the Protestant Reformation to the present. 

“Ours is one of the most outstanding institutions devoted to the art and culture of a single nation,” said Director Amy Meyers. “The challenge that we embrace enthusiastically is to understand, celebrate, interrogate, and critique that culture in a global context.” 

Turner Bay, fourth floor, following reinstallation, photograph by Richard Caspole

Tracing the growth of a native British school of artists, the installation reveals how frequently the story of art in Britain focuses on a narrative of international exchange. The new arrangement addresses the impact of immigration and travel on British art and culture across the centuries, and the role that the arts have played in the history of Britain’s imperial vision, exploring the ways in which the perception of the British Empire influenced how Britons saw themselves and others. The installation is organized chronologically, focused around a number of themes. On the fourth floor, these include: Becoming Great Britain (1550–1688); A Commercial Society (1688–1750); Rule Britannia? (1750–1775); Art and the Market (1775–1800); Revolution and Reaction (1800–1820); and The Age of Unease (1820–1850). On the second floor, these include: A New Age (1850–1900); Going Modern, Being British (1900–1945); The End of Empire (1945–1979); and Postmodern Britain (1979–present). Featured in the display are the Netherlandish artists who provided the foundations of British art in the Tudor period (1485–1603), as well as the seventeenth-century Flemish artists Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, and the eighteenth-century Italian artist Canaletto, German Johann Zoffany, and Americans John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West. 

“Our intention is to show the masterpieces of the collections to their best advantage, but within a richer, denser hang that will allow for more of the collection to be on view, and in an arrangement that will give a new variety and drama to the gallery spaces,” said Wilcox. 

Fourth-floor gallery following reinstallation, photograph by Richard Caspole

Many of the Center’s well-known treasures from the Paul Mellon Collection return to view in new and exciting juxtapositions, such as the works of George Stubbs, including his painting Zebra (1763); Joseph Wright of Derby’s The Blacksmith’s Shop (1771); J. M. W. Turner’s Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort packet-boat from Rotterdam becalmed (1818) and Staffa, Fingal’s Cave (1831–1832); and John Constable’s cloud studies (ca. 1821–1825) and Hadleigh Castle (1828–1829). The display also includes important loans, from a portrait of the young Elizabeth I to paintings by Allan Ramsay (1713–1784) and John Linnell (1792–1882), as well as coins and medals from the collection of Stephen Scher. Greeting visitors to the second floor is one of the Center’s most significant works of twentieth-century art, Rachel Whiteread’s Untitled (Ten Tables) (1996).  

Fourth-floor gallery following reinstallation, photograph by Richard Caspole

The main galleries on the skylit fourth floor explore the story of British art from the Elizabethan period (1558–1603) through the mid-nineteenth century. The presentation continues on the second floor with works spanning from the Victorian period (1837– 1901) to the present day, pairing other masterworks from the collection such as James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue and Silver (1872–1878), with major loans including paintings by Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896), John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), Francis Bacon (1909–1992), Lucian Freud (1922–2011), Sir Howard Hodgkin (b. 1932), Damien Hirst (b. 1965), and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (b. 1977). 

The reinstallation of the collection also includes a complete reconfiguration of the Long Gallery on the fourth floor, restoring the original conception of the space as a study gallery, as formulated by the Center’s founding director, Jules Prown, and as designed by Kahn. 

The space comprises an elegant sweep of seven bays in which more than two hundred works represent ensembles of subjects including beaches and coastlines, the British empire, the British theatre, “chaos and conviviality,” families, gardens, “the horse and sporting art,” “into the woods,” marine painting, portraits of artists, species and specimen, war and the military, and “women of distinction.” The addition of a muchneeded Collections Seminar Room at the end of the Long Gallery will allow faculty and students to request an up-close examination of paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings that are not currently on display.

Fourth-floor gallery following reinstallation, photograph by Richard Caspole

Fourth-floor gallery following reinstallation, photograph by Richard Caspole