They first met as students at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Now, they form half of the Yale Percussion Group — a tight-knit ensemble comprising the six students in Professor of Percussion Robert van Sice’s percussion studio.

“There are only six spots for percussion at Yale,” van Sice said. “So I have the luxury of a group size that is so small and focused, allowing me to do a kind of bespoke teaching.”

The word “bespoke” comes up often when students talk about Van Sice’s approach. Rather than an established curriculum, he tailors his teaching to each student’s projects, talents, and musical and technical needs. 

According to his students, this environment makes the learning experience “warm” and “built on trust.”

“It’s just more effective to find a focused way to get the best out of each young person than to pour information over their head and say, ‘Here’s what I teach,’” van Sice said.

Boyle described it as a “custom-tailored” learning experience and said that van Sice allows them to follow what they’re passionate about.

Van Sice, who began his career in Europe, drew inspiration from Europe’s highly developed chamber music culture. When he joined the Yale faculty in 1997, he brought with him the belief that chamber music should be the centerpiece of a percussionist’s training.

“Chamber music informs everything else,” he said. “An orchestral musician is just a kind of overgrown chamber musician… even a soloist is a sophisticated chamber musician who knows how to listen across the room.”

In Yale’s percussion studio, students learn and experience everything — from performances with the Philharmonia to solo repertoire to individual chamber endeavors — and often a combination of all in a single week.

Beebe described it as “trying to shove five pounds of stuff into a three-pound bag.” Still, he and his colleagues try to carve out around four additional hours daily for practice.

Unlike some instrumentalists — like violinists or pianists — percussionists don’t have centuries of repertoire behind them. While there are arrangements of pieces by Bach or Chopin arranged for percussion, many of the instruments’ core works were composed only in the past 40 to 50 years.

Several pieces were composed for van Sice, including commissioned pieces by leading composers Peter Klatzow, Alejandro Viñao and Martin Bresnick.

These works can be written for endless combinations of instruments — from marimbas and vibraphones to gongs and cowbells. Much of the joy of percussion comes from this experimentation, said Beebe.

However, there’s still a long way to go to expand the musical universe of percussion instruments. Judy Hu MUS ’26 noted that even for the marimba, the percussion’s most popular instrument, there are only about a dozen works considered “standard,” or commonly played, repertoire.

Chiang shared that lyrical, tonal percussion works are relatively rare, making new compositions especially valuable. She and other group members frequently collaborate with student composers at YSM to help expand the repertoire available to performers.

What results is a studio that doesn’t just learn how to perform percussion music, but helps shape it.

“The pace of growth is extraordinary,” van Sice said. “I can’t even imagine where the future of percussion is going. Every composer in the world is writing percussion music — and good percussion music.”

This wasn’t always the case. When van Sice began performing in the early 80s, the percussion world was just being born. Marimbas were unfamiliar to most concert presenters, and percussionists were often left out of the mainstream performance scene.

Today, much of percussion’s visibility is thanks to ensembles born out of YPG — including Sandbox Percussion, a recent Grammy nominee, and Sō Percussion, which won a Grammy this year.

When the award was announced, van Sice sent them a note acknowledging how proud he was of them, likening his letter to one that “someone’s grandfather would write.” 

Now, nearly three decades into his tenure at Yale, he’s writing down some of the most prominent memories from his career, currently contributing a chapter to “Marimba Masters,” a book set to come out this summer.

The opportunity has provided him with an unlikely source of reflection. While he has commissioned major works and performed at prestigious venues worldwide, “nothing beats teaching.”

Van Sice described his current students as having “so much talent and potential.” He is confident that they will thrive in any path they choose, whether in teaching, chamber music, or orchestral performance.

Van Sice founded the Yale Percussion Group in 1997.

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After finding out about NLE Choppa’s withdrawal, almost two weeks before the event, the Spring Fling committee scrambled to find a replacement act. Despite this last-minute line-up change, the committee is still confident that Ken Carson is the “right choice for the student body,” said Morris Raskin ’26.  

“Carson’s music is stylistically very different from NLE. It’s so energetic,” said Raskin, talent chair of the Spring Fling committee. “They’re both rappers, but on two very opposite sides of the rapper continuum.”

Even before his arrival to Yale, Ken Carson had already associated himself with the school through the eponymous single, “Yale.” This made Carson an “exciting and immediate choice,” Raskin said.  

Carson, whose real name is Kenyatta Lee Frazier Jr., is an Atlanta rapper and producer known for his high-intensity music, electrifying performance style and unique blend of musical styles. 

He rose to fame in 2015 after signing to 808 Mafia, and later solidified his fame after signing with Opium — a label owned by Playboi Carti, who performed at Yale’s Spring Fling in 2019. 

“It was very surprising and disappointing because we were very excited to have NLE come, but now that we have a new option, we are excited,” Raskin said. 

Finding and securing an artist usually takes months of work, but committee members expedited this process to select Ken Carson in a matter of days. 

The process of recruiting Ken Carson was an “uphill battle,” according to Raskin, especially as late April marks a busy time for college music festivals. 

“We’ve already had a lot of reps and experience of trying to figure out who to book, so it was just about getting right back into the flow of thinking about who our school would want to see and who would please the most people,” Raskin said. “I’m very proud that we were able to pull this off.” 

With the new lineup locked in and the event fast approaching, the committee looks forward to seeing the campus’s reaction. The concert has been a “long time coming,” said Raskin. 

Yale’s Spring Fling will take place on April 26 on Old Campus. 

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This year’s festival featured panels, roundtables, writing workshops and readings. Students could hear from and converse with professional poets, novelists, critics, playwrights, musicians and historians, as well as editors of the Yale Review. Featured speakers included Ocean Vuong, Lucy Sante, Jonathan Lethem, Raven Leilani and Catherine Lacey, among others. 

“The goal of the festival is to bring The Yale Review to students, to bring the pages alive into the rooms of the festival and to bring in a space of co-creation between writers and students,” said Meghan O’Rourke, editor of the Yale Review, in her introduction of the festival.  

This year’s festival was the “most ambitious yet,” said O’Rourke. 

The festival also hosted generative workshops — sessions in which audience members participated in writing exercises that experimented with the body, memory and language.

These sessions invited Catherine Lacey, author of “The Biography of X”; Ocean Vuong, author of “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”; and Raven Leilani, author of “Luster.” 

Lacey’s fiction generative workshop invited audience members to incorporate sensations of the body into the way they respond to and produce writing. 

Reflecting on her own experiences with figuring out her writing voice, Lacey described the process of writing her first published novel, “Nobody is Ever Missing.” For Lacey, she initially thought of writing as a “purely intellectual thing.” Later, she became aware of a “physical sensation” that accompanied her voice when she wrote. 

“There’s an internal kind of system, like a physical manifestation of the voice of the syntax that feels very bodily,” Lacey said. 

Recreating this feeling for her audience members, Lacey asked them to stand up and close their eyes. Lacey read excerpts from Thomas Bernhard’s “Woodcutters,” Ia Genberg’s “The Details” and Henry Hoke’s “Open Throat.” 

Lacey told participants to be aware of the “tensions and differences” that these writings evoked within the body. Following each reading, Lacey asked the audience to share the specific sensory experience that they felt. Then, students were asked to write a scene that evoked one of these sensations. 

“The body is very much present with you at your desk and your posture, your breathing and the tension in your body is affecting everything that you’re creating. You’re hearing the sentences in your mind as if they’re being kind of breathed into life,” Lacey said. 

In his generative workshop, Vuong also shared his insights into his writing process. Vuong emphasized the significance of challenging the prevailing need to focus on the end result. 

Living in “a country that fetishizes commerce,” Vuong said that this culture of consumerism has “contaminated” the way art is perceived. 

Seeking to shift the focus of writing from product to process, Vuong encouraged writers “to sit in the space of thinking and questioning and being okay with its imperfections.” 

“You’re not going to get anything close to a poem, just a few lines,” said Vuong. 

Vuong told the audience to write down their biographical information — their given name, date of birth, place of birth and every specific place they have lived. Vuong then asked the audience to identify and draw a map of their place of residence, as well as its interior and neighborhood surroundings. 

Fleshing out their memories further, participants were asked to jot down the sounds, lingo,  significant objects and feelings that were evoked by or found in their chosen living spaces. Participants finished this exercise by writing one to two lines of poetry that emerged from this  memory map. 

Raven Leilani’s prose workshop also challenged participants to reimagine the ways they used language in their writing. 

Leilani told participants to write a brief autobiography or a biography of a fictional character. Then, participants wrote from the same prompt two additional times without using any of the same language as the original paragraph. 

Through this exercise, writers could build upon what they had previously written in order to explore the nuances and tensions within a sentence and use varying language to articulate their ideas. 

By comparing the first and last entries they wrote, audience members could “see the distance between them” and go beyond “the familiar ways we have told the story,” said Leilani. 

The Yale Review is the oldest quarterly literary magazine in the United States.

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The festival was first held in 2012 and ran for the following two years. After 2014, the festival was discontinued. In fall 2017, two first-year students, Sabrina Macias ’21 and T.J. Maresca ’21, discovered the film festival on the Stiles website and revived the festival. 

“What the festival is about is just trying to bring the college together, to showcase student films, and have fun,” said Alex Johnson ‘25, one of the student organizers of the festival. 

Like the Yale Student Film Festival, which took place the week before, the Stiles Film Festival featured short films across numerous genres — experimental, comedy, drama and musical. 

Several of the screened films were made by first-time filmmakers. The festival was a way for new and long-time filmmakers to meet, connect with each other and potentially collaborate on future projects, according to Marc Levenson, the assistant director of operations at Stiles. 

“The festival is a chance for students of all levels of filmmaking — from serious filmmakers to hobbyists who are making their first film — to show their films in a setting that’s very cool, dignified and set up with great tech,” said Levenson. 

The Stiles dining hall was set up to resemble a movie theater — complete with a red carpet, projector, sparkling drinks, popcorn and film posters — bringing the screenings to life. 

The films were diverse in style and narrative, portraying stories that ranged from first loves to trash-riddled frat shenanigans to orchestral symphonies on black holes. 

Following the screening, moose-shaped trophies were given out to winners of six categories. 

Winning best experimental was Martin Vakoc’s ’26 “Hyperion Lot” — a sonic exploration of New Haven parking lots. “Paper Dreams,” Nicole Viloria’s ’26 first film, depicted a Yale first-year grappling with her past love and won best cinematography. 

Olivia Cevasco ’26’s “Scholar” showcased a Yale student struggling to balance his academic and creative side, culminating in an a capella performance that earned the film the award of best musical.  

“The Very Sad Tale of Gerald Humm” by Daphne Joyce Wu ’26 won best humor for its portrayal of a clueless Gerald Humm trying to figure out why his girlfriend broke up with him. Best drama went to Eleanor Atlee’s ’25 and Molly Smith’s ’25 collaboration of “The Walrus,” an emotional close-up of a sister struggling to remember her brother’s favorite chips. 

Johnson’s film “Proxy” – an intense, mind-bending trip to the multiverse through a professor’s mid-life crisis – took home best film overall. 

Other films screened were “Practice” by Erita Chen ’26, “An Ode to Avocado” by Paloma Lenz ’26, “Active Galactic Nuclei for Symphony Orchestra” by Rory Benjamin Bricca ’26, “Saint Valentine” by Eleanor Atlee ’25, “Black Coffee” by Daphne Joyce Wu ’26, “Trashley and the Curse of the Frat Paddle” by Molly Smith ’25 and “Goodbye, Shanghai” by Chenjun Gao ’27. 

Susan Youssef, Yale College film advisor and one of the judges for the festival, was deeply impressed by the films and praised the “bravery” of making a film as a student. 

“We’re rooting for these works. It’s a joyful and optimistic process. I’m scoring the films, as if I am rooting for the film to win: each and every film,” Youssef wrote in an email to the News.  

The Stiles Film Festival reflects the many efforts of the college to host a lot of fun community events, as Levenson put it. 

Youssef echoed these sentiments, praising Stiles’s “warm, kind and celebratory environment,” which provides a welcoming space for students who are just starting to make films and showing their work to an audience. 

“Watching a film in this setting is also an invaluable learning experience. It’s a way for students to understand how their films play — how they sound, how they land emotionally, and how audiences truly react,” wrote Youssef. 

Ezra Stiles College was founded in 1961.

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“You could call it a forgery, but it’s actually an amalgamation of different ancient glass pieces,” Brody said. “The final product is not authentic, but the pieces are.”

That gray area — between authenticity and artifice — reflects the broader ambiguity surrounding how objects are acquired, displayed and maintained across several University-operated museums. From questionable acquisitions to repatriated artifacts, the University has increasingly had to contend with the histories behind the objects it houses. 

Authentication challenges at the YUAG

Brody, who works with the YUAG’s collection of ancient Mediterranean art, said that authentication is particularly difficult for ancient objects. Even with recent scientific developments, it can be challenging to claim with certainty whether an object is real or not. Moreover, the materials from which many ancient objects are made each present their own challenges when it comes to dating.

With marble, an isotope analysis could tell you what quarry it came from, but not its age. With bronze, you can run tests to determine its composition, but not its date of origin. The accuracy of thermoluminescent dating for pottery might be hindered by subsequent kiln-firings. Some residual organic materials — such as charcoal residue left in an ancient pot — can be carbon-dated, but are uncommon.

As evidenced by the “Funnel-Mouthed Vessel with Elephant Heads,” the line between authentic and inauthentic is itself challenging to identify.

Some inauthentic pieces, such as plaster casts of real artifacts, are used for educational purposes, Brody said.

Pointing to other examples of ambiguity in the YUAG’s collection, Brody highlighted a likely portrait of the disgraced Emperor Nero, which was recarved after his death but still within the Roman period. She also noted that some ancient portraits were recarved or restored during the Renaissance. Situations like these, she said, present a difficult question.

“If it’s ancient but has had work done to it, is it no longer ancient anymore?” Brody asked.

Another reason objects might be difficult to authenticate is that forgers can be extremely skilled, often matching the tools and techniques of ancient artisans.

She said that sometimes there is “no test” to definitively determine whether a piece of art was made in 200 B.C. or in 1923. Instead, this assessment is often enacted by experienced curators, who have the ability to “look at a sculpture and think something is off about it.”

Denise Leidy, curator of Asian art, echoed Brody’s assertion.

“I’m absolutely convinced that everything that’s on view upstairs is real,” Leidy said, referring to the Asian art exhibit at the YUAG. “There’s this sort of drive in my brain filled with images … so if an object doesn’t look right, then I do research.”

For Leidy, scientific testing is often a valuable tool for refining dating accuracy for pieces in the YUAG’s Asian art collection. She said that such assessments are a “constant process” that involves collaborating with international scholars to make adjustments based on new information and scientific data. Most of the time, errors relate to alterations to an object affecting its true origin date, rather than learning that a piece is truly a fake.

Leidy cited a series of Jain paintings in the YUAG’s collection, which she originally believed were from the 16th century. However, after a faculty member raised questions about the accuracy of the language used in the works, she conducted XRF testing — a noninvasive technique that can help estimate the date of origin by identifying modern materials unavailable in earlier periods. The results revealed that some of the paintings were actually from the 20th century. The object records on the YUAG’s website were subsequently updated to reflect this development.

Provenance: Where do objects in Yale’s collection come from?

Provenance, which refers to the ownership history of a piece of art or artifact, has become an increasingly relevant field in the museum world.

Brody said that, in recent years, the gallery has made strides to be “as diligent as possible” when it comes to researching the provenance of its collections. That includes adding provenance information to the online database and reevaluating objects acquired or donated, especially those acquired before the rise of modern collecting standards.

Brody often works with Mediterranean and Near Eastern antiquities, a collection which contains many artifacts and artworks that have been excavated by Yale-affiliated archeologists. The Yale-France excavations, which took place in the 1920s and 1930s, account for over 12,000 artifacts now housed in the YUAG’s collection. And because those digs were officially sanctioned and jointly organized, the objects they yielded are accompanied by complete provenance records.

But not every object in the YUAG’s collection comes with such clarity.

For Leidy, provenance is not a significant part of day-to-day work. As the head of the Asian Art department, she said her involvement with provenance comes primarily when acquiring new pieces.

“Most American museums are built on gifts,” said Leidy. “So when I want to accept a gift, I do some provenance research.”

When offered a donation, Leidy said she first evaluates whether it adds value to the collection. If she decides it does, she works with the donor to establish a documented ownership history. But often, that is not entirely possible. Many pieces move through multiple owners, and ownership changes were not always accurately tracked across time. She said a “Eurocentric” focus in the art world often complicates tracing objects of non-European origin.

“If you take your average Chinese 14th-century green glaze ceramic, those were made at kilns in China, put on ships and sent around the world,” Leidy continued. “Are you gonna be able to trace every step on the journey of that? Absolutely not.”

Koby Chen ’26, a history of art major who interned at an art auction house last summer, echoed Leidy’s concerns about the attainability of developing complete provenance records.

For Chen, the ethics of cultural stewardship extend beyond provenance efforts.

“Provenance research is important, but we should be doing more,” Chen said. “A lot of provenance research is a means for institutions to try to grapple with their own guilt and the fact that they’ve exploited all these people and places. And it’s an easy way to do that because they don’t have to give money directly to communities or support anyone materially.”

Antonia Bartoli, the curator of provenance research at the YUAG, emphasized the value of this research while acknowledging its uneven nature across collections. 

She said that art from the Western canon, including American and European pieces, tends to be documented more extensively.

Bartoli said that information used to generate provenance records for individual art pieces might include a dealer’s fact sheet, an auction catalogue or a scholarly publication. Sometimes, one might look at the object itself for clues. For example, Bartoli said that objects made in multiples — like prints, furniture or photography — can be hard to track through traditional ownership records. Instead, their markings and labels offer the most conclusive evidence of their provenance.

Past repatriation efforts at Yale

In 1970, UNESCO held a convention to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural property, establishing a framework that has led to more rigorous standards for newly acquired pieces. Still, many older acquisitions at the YUAG include incomplete provenance records that require ongoing research.

In these cases, provenance research often becomes more than a matter of record-keeping. It can be a valuable tool for repatriating objects back to the countries they came from. 

Bartoli said that relevant information about provenance concerns is sometimes brought to the YUAG by external parties like nations, individuals, researchers or institutions. She added that the YUAG is five years into a provenance research project that takes a “systematic look” at its collection areas. According to Bartoli, that includes investigating an object’s ownership history to identify names of known looters and traffickers, which would indicate the illegal sale of cultural property.

“We do try to do this work proactively, transparently and collaboratively,” said Bartoli. 

But the YUAG is not always able to identify these issues before law enforcement.

In April 2022, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office sent the YUAG a warrant for 13 objects looted from India and Myanmar. Nine of the artifacts were directly tied to now-infamous art dealer Subhash Kapoor, who for years displayed and sold looted items with forged provenance records.

Just a month after that seizure, the YUAG announced the repatriation of another object — this time to Nepal.

Research in 2021 had revealed that the Buddhist goddess Tara had been reported missing from a temple in Nepal. After being contacted by the Consul General of Nepal in New York, gallery staff met with him and confirmed through research from archaeologists in Kathmandu that the sculpture had been worshipped as the Hindu goddess Parvati until 1976.

The University’s history of contested ownership and delayed repatriation extends well into the past and beyond the YUAG, reaching into another Yale gallery.

Until 2010, the Peabody Museum held thousands of artifacts — including human bones — from Machu Picchu that had been loaned to prominent explorer and Yale lecturer Hiram Bingham by the Peruvian government in the early 1900s. The Peruvian government granted Bingham the loan specifically for scientific research, with the explicit condition that the objects would be returned upon Peru’s request.

When Peru eventually requested their return, the University refused. Instead, it argued that the artifacts had been given permanently, despite written correspondence from Bingham recognizing the terms of his agreement and promising to return the objects to their country of origin.

In 2008, Peru sued Yale in U.S. federal court, and Yale eventually moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that the nation had waited too long to request their return. 

Later that year, then-Peruvian president Alan Garcia led a protest through Lima demanding the return of the objects. Thousands of protestors attended. Garcia even asked President Obama for help, and then-Yale president Richard Levin sent a delegation to Lima to resolve the dispute. 

The resulting agreement was negotiated between three parties: Yale, the government of Peru and Peru’s National University of San Antonio Abad del Cusco, or UNSAAC. Today, all of the disputed artifacts from Bingham’s Machu Picchu visits have been returned to Cusco, Peru.

The delegation included Richard Burger ’72, who joined the University’s faculty in 1981 and still teaches in the Archaeological Studies department. Burger emphasized the positive impacts of sending the artifacts back to Peru.

“I was struck by how much it meant to the people of Cusco to have them back,” he said.

Still, Burger called attention to the nuances of the situation, asserting that initial demands on the part of President Alejandro Toledo’s administration were politically motivated and included “historically inaccurate” claims about how the University had obtained the collections. He referred to the process as a “return” rather than a “repatriation,” noting the unique historical circumstances surrounding the artifacts.

The dispute, he suggested, gained traction as a political issue rather than a scholarly one — an approach that created tension with Yale’s position at the time. Burger credited Victor Raul Aguilar, the former rector — a role akin to president — of UNSAAC, with facilitating direct talks and helping shift the conversation out of the political sphere and into one of academic collaboration.

“Machu Picchu has a unique place in Peruvian identity and history,” said Burger. “So it was important for this collection to go back.”

He also acknowledged a different side to the broader debate around whether Western institutions should return objects to their countries of origin. 

“When objects are displayed here, it’s a way of exposing our populations to these cultures, which they might not otherwise see,” he said. 

For Burger, that includes cross-cultural understanding and points of connection for diasporic communities who may find pieces of their heritage represented in these institutions.

At UNSAAC, said Burger, the objects are well-appreciated and remain accessible to scholars and the public alike. In many cases, Yale researchers are still making use of the collection from afar, because the final agreement between the three parties included provisions for continued collaboration between Yale and UNSAAC.

Yale has made meaningful progress, Burger suggested, by engaging with the institution and its scholars as partners on equal footing, reflecting a broader move toward more reciprocal and respectful forms of academic exchange.

“There’s no sense that Yale is still pulling the strings,” said Burger of the relationship the university has with UNSAAC. “We’re just colleagues who are collaborating, and we bring certain skills just as they have certain skills and resources.”

Students, faculty lead recent calls for repatriation

While that model of mutual respect has shaped Yale’s connection with UNSAAC, the University is still reckoning with other parts of its collecting history.

Just a few years ago, Joshua Ching ’26 helped prepare ancestral remains called iwi kūpuna to be repatriated to Hawaii. In 2022, during his first year at Yale, Ching, a Hawaii native, collaborated with professor Hi’ilei Hobart and two other students to carry out the repatriation.

“It was the second month that I had been at Yale,” recalled Ching. “I was already feeling incredibly homesick … and then my first real, tangible encounter with something from home was the bones of my ancestors. It just reoriented the way that I saw and understood Yale.”

Ching emphasized the importance of institutional action, mentioning how Hobart herself had only learned about the ancestral remains on a tour of the Peabody. After that, she began searching for other native Hawaiians at Yale who might be interested in helping her with the repatriation process, which includes specific ceremonial rites.

He said he hopes Yale invests in more funding and staff to repatriate objects and reckon with the institution’s “complicated and extractive histories.”

Ching added that he felt “immense guilt” about being at Yale after the repatriation process, disheartened by his involvement with an institution whose research had, for years, been rooted in unethical practices. Benefiting from Yale’s resources instead of being home in Hawaii, he said he even considered leaving.

Ultimately, Ching decided to stay and push for change from within.

“It’s a responsibility that Native folks have when they come into these spaces,” he said. “But it’s also an incredibly traumatic experience for a Native student to have to inherit the responsibility of repatriating their ancestors back to their homeland. I feel like there never should have been a circumstance where it’s students and faculty who are leading a repatriation.”

A 1990 federal law requires museums and other institutions to repatriate Native American human remains and sacred objects, but many institutions have been slow to comply. Moreover, the law does not apply to Indigenous artifacts from communities outside the United States, leaving significant gaps in global repatriation efforts.

Ching said he hopes for more transparency from Yale about its collections and that it works to repatriate objects to indigenous communities across the globe.

Ching and Chen share one common perspective: a call for institutions to take greater accountability in how they acquire, research, and display cultural objects.

“As an academic leader, Yale ought to fulfill the principles it purports,” said Chen.

There are over 30 million objects in Yale University’s collections.

Correction, Apr. 16: A previous version of this article misattributed the sale of misdated Jain paintings to known art trafficker Subhash Kapoor. In fact, they were sold by Sanjay Kapoor, who has not been implicated in criminal investigations. The article has been updated to reflect this.

The post Real, fake, stolen? Yale University’s collections under scrutiny appeared first on Yale Daily News.

From Slavic music and customer service to auto-consumption and land reform laws, these creatives integrate different, personal experiences with their work in all shapes and forms.

THISBE WU ’26: Inspiration is everywhere — from portraits to Slavic music to Alice Neel. 

Comic books were Thisbe Wu’s ’26 first source of inspiration. As a child, she was drawn to creativity in all forms, whether it be performances, galleries, films or museums. Having experimented with portraiture, oil painting and sculptures, she now considers herself a printmaker.

She’s always been drawn to capturing the people around her, she said. Her favorite piece — a portrait that she painted as a high school senior of her dad and his brother as children — is a testament to this love of representing friends and family and her art.

Growing up in New York City, the proportions of a face she learned to draw were always based on white examples. She found “joy” in painting family members and learning how to “truthfully and authentically” portray people who look like her, both in a technical sense and in an emotional sense.

Over spring break, Thisbe visited the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila over spring break and saw portraits of Filipinos, painted by Filipinos in a “Western 19th century style.” Looking at the way these artists had rendered the Asian faces, she felt them working through the same technical challenges of light and shadow. 

“It was really magical to see this history and lineage and tradition of painting that I hadn’t encountered before,” said Thisbe. “And see Asian faces being represented so beautifully and with such care and respect when a lot of the paintings of Asian people from that era that are by Western artists are really orientalist.”

While her Chinese heritage informs Thisbe’s art, it’s not a defining feature of her work. At a Balkan camp in upstate New York last summer, she leant the doumbek and tambura. Now, on campus, her role as director of the Yale Slavic Chorus has become an important part of her life — and her art. 

Music is a huge source of inspiration for Thisbe. Her taste ranges from Mozart to The Cure to The Cranberries. Specifically, she’s been a fan of Mitsuko Uchida since high school. 

“There are videos of Mitsuko online, but seeing it in real life was really, really incredible,” said Thisbe, recounting a concert experience. “She has a really unconventional way of conducting. She doesn’t give a beat pattern. It’s all about the push and pull of the sound and the emotion of the sound and the tension and release.”

CLAIRE CHEY ART ’25: Sex with ghosts and other artistic provocations

Claire paints bodies. She thinks about consumption, self-consumption, pleasure, trauma and dreams. 

Before coming to Yale, Claire spent four years trying to “make it” as an artist in Korea. She worked images of food, comparing that to the sexualization and consumption of women, often dealing with violent images.

During her first exhibit at a gallery-café in Seoul, she displayed two large paintings of women’s bodies. Customers walked out after seeing her work, considered “too provocative and sexual.” The paintings were soon covered with curtains.

At her first solo show, a professor from a well-known Korean art school walked out when she explained that a painting was about sexual violence and UTIs. 

Now at Yale, Claire feels free to take her work in new directions and push boundaries without fear of immediate judgment. She’s become more interested in what happens within and how trauma functions to shape desires.

“As a woman, when you’re taught that your body is up for consumption, how do you deal with that? How do you live with yourself when you’re alone? Or how do you find desire?” said Claire. “And I know that’s going to be a tricky murky area, but I think that’s where my interest is, kind of deconstructing that.”

With a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Gender Studies, Claire thinks about her personal experiences, not as a singular experience, but as part of a wider story, much like Tracy Emin, she said. Emin’s work is currently on display at the Yale Center for British Art. Claire’s artistic inspirations also include Marlene Dumas, Miriam Cahn and Tala Madani.

While she used to work with extensions of her own body, she’s expanded into the bodies of older women, including that of her mother and of animals.

She’s also become interested in Korean ghost stories. In particular, the phenomenon of “guijup,” in which people claim to have sexual encounters with ghosts, caught her attention. To Claire, this phenomenon reflects a deeper generational trauma that Korean society has never fully reckoned with, as well as the cultural taboo around talking openly about sex.

Though she remains hesitant to display work in Korea in the future, she’s hopeful that the culture might shift.

KAI CHEN ’26: The history of hair, domesticity and androgyny captured through the lens 

Behind the counter of his parent’s Chinese takeout restaurant in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 5-year-old Kai would nap on stacks of Coca-Cola crates as his parents’ served customers. The restaurant became their home.

Once old enough, they would help with taking orders and handing out food, shuttling between English with customers and Mandarin with his parents.

As a shy kid, customer service didn’t come naturally to Kai, and the performance of customer service led them to bigger questions. In their art, Kai thinks of the performativity of surfaces and the idea of “welding performance as a powerful exertion of power.”

Art was always an insular activity for Kai. Their earliest art education came from surfing Wikipedia and watching YouTube videos. Through this, they discovered Félix Gonzélez-Torres, specifically the piece “Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.),” which opened their understanding of what art could be, they said. 

Recently, Kai has been interested in domestic scenes and the artifice of photography. Focusing on the distortion of the lens, their most recent project photographs his parents in everyday moments — chopping vegetables, playing Mahjong, even just lying around the house.

The intersectionality of being queer and Asian American is reflected in Kai’s art. Inspired by Agnes Denes gridded drawings, they’ve been thinking about hair as a line, lineage and genetic material, familial connection.

“Hair’s often this racialized, gendered thing, right?” Kai said. “My parents kind of don’t like my long hair but the hair is also part of my queerness.”

In a recent series, Kai focuses on the transcription of a photograph into a drawing or painting, with the grid facilitating this transduction process. Shades of purple are the primary color used in this series, said Kai, as they feel that this color has some proximity to androgyny.

Looking forward, they are excited to spend their summer at the Yale Norfolk School of Art and live in a cottage at the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate — which Kai described as an almost “mythical place” with “summer camp vibes.” They look forward to making work outside of classes, as well as the creative freedom that comes with that self-driven process.

ARIEL KIM ’26: $22 sketchbook and blue ballpoint pen conveys catharsis and immediacy 

Ariel Kim ’26 spent part of her childhood in Jinju, South Korea and lived with her grandparents. There, she grew an interest in cicadas, what she described as a “really loud type of insect” abundantly found in Jinju.  Her fascination in the sounds of cicadas found its way into her art during her freshman year at Yale. 

“I was obsessed with the cicada life cycle,” she said. “They live underground for so long, then emerge for just a few weeks and cry out. There’s something so poetic about that.”

As part of a Creative and Performing Arts exhibit in February 2025, titled “March Blue Period: Life in Ballpoint,” she included a number of pieces with cicada motifs. This exhibit was particularly meaningful for Ariel – as it marked the end of an art block that had lasted for years.

Drawing on the first page of her “overpriced” blue sketchbook from Hull’s, after a long break from drawing, Ariel said, she felt this “this massive sense of catharsis.” Since then, she’s been drawing almost every day.

Her favorite piece from the exhibit, as shown above, came from a place of immediacy and raw emotion. 

“If you can see here, the smudges are from my palm, or you see  the other side, how it digs into the paper,” Ariel said. “That’s from other sketches I did, pages after pages of it, or just also wanting to escape from that place, truly off the page.”

She plans to travel across Japan and Korea this summer for her creative thesis project — a graphic novel based on an intergenerational story that touches on Japanese occupation and the Korean War. Then, she will return to the U.S. and research more about the Asian American diaspora. 

Her dad grew up in Brooklyn and the Bronx, during a time in which few Asian Americans lived there. According to Ariel, she hopes to look at the history of segregation through an Asian American lens and tie these stories together in a part-historical, part-fictional graphic novel.

Alongside her thesis project, Ariel has been planning a fabric arts installation which connects ideas of masculinity and meat consumption together. The project highlights how the subjugation of animals parallels the oppression of women and minorities.

Ariel chose to major in Anthropology, not despite her interest in art, but because of it. To Ariel, a canvas and an empty Google Doc page are similar in multiple ways – both begin completely blank and you begin to fill it with your lived experiences and what you’ve been learning.

PURVAI RAI MFA ’25: Art as a lifestyle

Purvai Rai MFA ’25 spent two years traveling across Punjab, India — following rivers from their source to the India-Pakistan border, studying crop cycles and talking to local farmers about land reform laws.

Growing up in Delhi, the political heart of India, Purvai said that she had a front-row seat to social change. She loved making things — painting, documenting, experimenting — but just creating for creativity’s sake wasn’t enough for her. Purvai was determined to create art with a purpose, work that addresses  questions of policy and activism.

Her family is no stranger to witnessing and recording political shifts. Her father worked as a photojournalist, capturing scenes of upheaval and community, while her mother, a conservation architect, taught Purvai how politics and space could intersect, said Purvai.

“From a really young age, I was going to exhibitions, seeing protests, and realizing that art could speak about larger issues,” said Purvai. 

This motivated her to spend time working in her ancestral village in Punjab with farmers — learning of their personal interests, struggles and histories. 

From her time with them, she learned about the 1976 Urban Land Ceiling Act, a policy intended to equalize property ownership, and its unintended consequences. Some families gained land but others lost jobs, while landlords no longer felt responsible for the entire village’s welfare, said Purvai. 

‘It’s not as simple as ‘feudalism was bad and capitalism is good,’” she said. “The social networks within those systems matter. And for many people on the ground, it’s never just about the policy alone.’

Purvai hopes to contain this complexity.  

A mixed media artist, Purvai has used locally sourced cotton fabrics to create installations made of textiles, referencing the farmland’s own resources. She’s experimented with rice – red, black, genetically modified varieties – to comment on how climate change, capitalism and tradition all collide in the fields of Punjab. Even the tiles from her family’s ancestral home show up in her work. 

Purvai was the 2024 Artist in Residence at the Henry Moore Foundation.

ADITYA DAS ’27: Merging computer science and creative design
Aditya Das ’27 picked up fine art as a hobby over COVID-19 quarantine. Growing up as a STEM student, art became his creative outlet. During his first year at Yale, Aditya enrolled in introductory design class “Art 132” with Professor van Assen on a whim and soon realized that he could combine his love for structure with creativity through the Computing and the Arts major. Now, he’s the co-president of Design at Yale.

According to Aditya, the idea of creating for a specific function — whether it’s a logo, a poster or a promotional piece — feels like blending creativity with problem-solving. Creating art through programming didn’t feel restrictive for Aditya; rather, it added cohesiveness to his work, which he describes as “all over the place.”

In a class project for his introductory design class, he had to design a magazine or brochure advertising a public space. So, he chose to focus on the Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas, which closed in 2023. 

He designed a magazine that could fold into a three-dimensional popcorn box. This project was a turning point for Aditya; it helped him realize all that he could do with design. 

Aditya reflected on his upbringing as an Indian-American. He said that when he first began studying design in a classroom setting, much of the content was drawn from the Western canon: Swiss modernism, typefaces from European foundries and classic theories about “crystal goblet” design.  

Surprised to learn that an Indian type-foundry had produced many of the fonts used day-to-day, Aditya said that he was considering the possibility of Indian design elements in Western work. 

Still, he grapples with the nuances of being an Indian American designer, unsure if he can speak authentically on behalf of a culture he only partially represents, said Aditya.

“Because I think when I first started learning design, and here in class, everything I learned was from the West, and everything I did was for the West,” said Aditya. “I didn’t really even know how to incorporate Indian iconography motifs, or design, or like Indian based design into it, because I didn’t really know even what that looked like, or how to draw upon what I’ve seen.” 

On Asian-ness in Art
The six artists engage with their Asian-ness in similar and different ways.

Whereas Claire pushes against the restrictions of Korean cultural taboos, Purvai’s art is largely centered around the storied history of her ancestral village in Punjab.

For Aditya, Indian iconography and motifs seem more difficult to claim as ‘his own,’ while Kai’s allusions to the Chinese immigrant experience are based largely on his upbringing, working at his parents’ takeout restaurant.

Similarly, Ariel and Thisbe — two artists who have initially learned art through a Western-centric lens — are teaching themselves new ways of rendering light, shape and shadow as they depict faces and bodies of their community.

The South Asian Youth Initiative displayed “Reclaiming Roots” at the Afro-American Cultural Center from April 2 to April 7, 2025 – an exhibit curated by Nithya Guthikonda ’26.

The post A constellation of Asian American artists at Yale  appeared first on Yale Daily News.

There are roughly 150 black and white and color prints on display, drawn from the permanent collections of the YUAG and the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition was a joint curatorial endeavor between the two institutions in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid.

“The curators were all on the same page that we wanted to show Goldblatt in a new light,” said Judy Ditner, YUAG’s curator of photography. “We came to the images with…fresh eyes, trying to make connections among them, and open a pathway for … new research rather than showing them chronologically as they may have been in the past.”

The exhibition is divided into seven thematic sections of images: “Informality,” “Near/Far,” “Disbelief,” “Working People,” “Extraction,” “Assembly” and “Dialogues.”

Although Goldblatt opposed Apartheid, he was not an activist. His photos reflect his attempts to present a nuanced view of daily life in South Africa.

“His role was to look as dispassionately as possible at what was in front of him, and not just the moments of violence, or protest, or tension but really at all aspects,” said Ditner. “Apartheid permeated every aspect of South African life, and he tried to capture those daily injustices and not the ones that were headline making.”

As Yale history professor Daniel Magaziner notes, the title of the exhibition – “No Ulterior Motive” – references an ad Goldblatt placed in local publications, seeking people willing to become his portrait subjects.

A historian of 20th century South Africa, Magaziner contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue – “The Empty Space Between Earth and Sky: David Goldblatt’s Dutch Reformed Church Photographs.”

“There was not an ulterior motive other than the image making,” said Magaziner, “which is to say, the observation, the witnessing, which I think comes across very powerfully, and the works are very eloquent in that way.”

Goldblatt, who died in 2018, mentored a generation of aspiring photographers in South Africa — such as Lebohang Kganye and Zanele Muholi. Their works are included in the exhibition in dialogue with his images.

Also included in the exhibition are images by his peers in photography – Ernest Cole, Santu Mofokeng and Jo Ractliffe.

One of Goldblatt’s earliest images in the exhibition is Children on the border between Fietas and Mayfair, Johannesburg, 1949. In this monochrome print, a group of black and white children are prominent in the foreground, as they play exuberantly on the sidewalk and smile toward the camera.

One child – perhaps shy about the photographer’s presence – partly hides his face with a package in a moment of peek-a-boo. In the distance, some of the town of Fietas can be seen as three young Black men walk down the street in the direction of the children.

The photograph attempts to foreshadow how opportunities for interracial play would not last long in Fietas.

The government tried to exert more control over the growing “non-white” population of Fietas (also known as Pageview) and other communities by evicting and relocating them to enforce racial segregation. Passed in 1950, “The Group Areas Act” mandated the segregation of racial groups, including the Muslim and Indian populations, into specific residential and business areas.

Free travel became restricted, something that would come to be accepted as a fact of daily life. Goldblatt vividly documented this reality in “Young men with dompas (an identity document every African had to carry), White City, Jabavu, Soweto, 1972.”

“The Destruction of District Six Under the Group Areas Act, Cape Town, 5 May 1982,” is a landscape image that powerfully conveys the dehumanizing effects of Apartheid after more than three decades, even though no people are seen. This black and white print shows a bulldozed area in the foreground with ruins of homes and businesses – the modern Cape Town skyline and Signal Hill rising behind them.

As Goldblatt’s career progressed, he became more descriptive in his titles, which in turn became much longer. An example of this is his large-scale color photograph, “Highly carcinogenic blue asbestos waste on the Owendale Asbestos Mine tailings dump, near Postmasburg, Northern Cape. The prevailing wind was in the direction of the mine officials’ houses at right, 21 December 2002.”

The asbestos tailings occupy almost the entire frame, slanting from left to right near the top, leaving a narrow strip of land between the tailings and the mine officials’ houses. A ribbon of blue sky occupies the top of the frame.

“He becomes explicit in documenting the slow violence to peoples’ bodies,” said Magaziner. “It’s almost out of necessity because otherwise it’s just an image of rubble.”

Alexis Mburu ’27, a student in Magaziner’s course, “A History of South Africa,” reflected on Goldblatt’s work overall and whether he should have been more politically vocal earlier in his career.

“I think I’m still grappling with that question. It’s obviously very nuanced,” she said. “Whether or not someone should be an activist is a very personal question. I’m more inclined to say, ‘yes, your work should be asking for something.’ But I can [also] respect the fact that one’s work does not have to be deeply intertwined with one’s political beliefs.”

According to Magaziner, “No Ulterior Motive” presents images that only a certain type of photographer in South Africa at that time could have made – a white person of privilege who could move freely throughout the country.

“Wedding photography at the Oppenheimer Memorial, Jabavu, Soweto 1972” was especially moving for Magaziner. In that black and white image, a new bride stands in front of a water feature with, groom, three children and a young woman – all of color.

The bride’s veil billows in the wind, and one of the children and the young woman hold her train. In the distance can be seen a dense subdivision of matchbox houses built by the Apartheid government particularly for removed people.

“Apartheid lasted for thirty-six years. That’s a long time,” said Magaziner. “People lived their lives and found these moments of beauty and serenity within the context of these powerful structures.”

Apartheid ended in the early 1990s through the collective action of the people, combined with international pressure, forcing the government to change its policy.

Goldblatt’s retrospective exhibition reveals the complexity and tensions of daily life under Apartheid as well as the lingering issues of social and economic injustice to be addressed as South Africa entered the post-Apartheid era.

“David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive” will be on view at YUAG through June 22, 2025.

The post The YUAG’s “David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive” portrays South African photographer in a “new light” appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The show will feature dancing, singing and other performances celebrating aspects of Filipino culture, history and community.

“As we say in the introduction to the show each year, Barrio is principally an expression of Filipino artistic joy; it’s a time to celebrate our shared heritage and culture, and a reminder that being Filipino is more than just a label—it is a lived experience,” Janina Gbenoba ’27, Kasama co-president, wrote in an email to the News.

Each year follows a specific theme, this year’s theme being “Kasamarama” — inspired by Filipino game shows. The show also draws inspiration from Philippine Cultural Nights.

According to Marissa Halagao ’27, Kasama co-president, Philippine Cultural Nights emerged as a way for Filipino migrants to hold onto and cherish their culture as they navigated through assimilation throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

“Barrio represents our community’s resilience and commitment towards empowering our heritage, as we navigate a space that historically has not always adequately empowered or represented our identities,” Halagao wrote in an email.

One of the most anticipated parts of every year’s Barrio Fiesta is Tinikling — the Philippines’ national dance. Dancers jump in and out of bamboo poles, and the goal is for one’s feet to not get stuck in between.

There will be three different Tinikling routines at Barrio, with each taking months to perfect. Of the three, two are newly choreographed performances, according to Naysa Kalugdan ’27, Kasama’s Barrio Director.

“We’ve been working very hard since February to showcase these routines and are extremely excited for everyone to witness them,” wrote Naysa Kalugdan ’27, Kasama’s Barrio director.

For members of Kasama, this year’s Barrio Fiesta is especially meaningful because it will also celebrate Kasama’s efforts to offer Tagalog at Yale. Tagalog is the Philippines’ national language and one of the most spoken languages within the United States.

In partnership with the MacMillan Center’s Council for Southeast Asian Studies, Kasama was able to get Tagalog offered as a language course beginning in the Fall 2025 semester.

“We hope this milestone for Yale and the Filipino community can help us amplify our desire for more Filipinx Studies and Filipino history representation as a whole, and the fact that the fight for Tagalog is rooted in anti-colonialism, and we stand for anti-colonialism everywhere,” wrote Halagao.

Many find preparing for the show to be a fun and challenging way to connect with their Filipino heritage, especially for those who did not grow up around many Filipinos.

The community has become invaluable to members of the club.

“I’m from Minnesota, which is not home to many Filipinos, so joining Kasama felt like a home away from home,” said Kalugdan. “I really felt connected to our community through the weekly tinikling practices from my first year. I simultaneously got to know the members of Kasama better and learned more about Filipino culture last year,” wrote Kalugdan.

Barrio will be held at 53 Wall St. and is entirely free of charge.

The post Kasama to host annual Barrio Fiesta cultural show this Saturday appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Displayed through April 7 at the third floor gallery, the exhibit aimed to showcase work from South Asian artists that emphasizes this year’s theme of the conference, “Reclaiming Roots.” 

In the 22 years of hosting SAYI, a national intercollegiate conference for South Asian and Indo-Caribbean students at Yale, this is the first art exhibit that has been included amongst the conference’s usual lineup of a fashion show, workshops and panelists.

According to SAYI Director Aly Moosa ‘25, the theme is inspired by global changes in politics, society and the economy to encourage participants to question and reconsider their identity.

“The art exhibit is a testament to recognize that there’s so many different ways of exploring identity,” said Moosa. “Specifically with this conference, it’s giving people the avenue to confront what identity means to them, challenge that, agree with it, disagree with it.”

The exhibition includes work from middle school students to graduate students to professional artists, showcasing a diverse range of experiences. 

Moosa and Nithya Guthikonda ’26 proposed the idea of this exhibit, as well as the plan to include New Haven public school students and give them an opportunity to engage in the conference.

“I thought it would be interesting to think about what it would mean for different people across ages to think about what reclaiming roots meant to them,” said Moosa. “To see the art not only as a conduit to explore that meaning, but also see it as a timeline.”

Four works were created by students at New Haven’s Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School, including two kiln-fired ceramics inspired by the ceramics used by Afghan women as water jugs and two hand-painted self-portraits that were digital photos.

Guthikonda explained her process behind selecting the art and artists to be featured in the exhibit. She said she wanted the exhibit to be reflective of the emotional impact of the project, emphasizing the intimacy and vulnerability of the artists’ work.

She added that in displaying these artworks was “so much more” about the artist than their artwork. 

In her curatorial vision, Guthikonda included testimonies and personal statements written by the artists to emphasize their unique individual experiences with “reclaiming” their roots.

“Reclaiming roots is about being comfortable in your South Asian identity in a world that is sort of defining what South Asia is for you,” said Hanan Yousuf ‘26, panel curator for SAYI.

A diverse array of mediums was incorporated in the exhibit, including a series of photographs, a quilt made from used pants, shirts and gamchas and a video installation.

The assortment of various artistic media reflected the diversity of ages, perspectives and timelines captured by the art. Yousuf said that these qualities made for an immersive viewer-experience.

“We’re understanding the past and our present so that we can further the future as well,” said Yousuf.

Guthikonda connected personally to prominent Indian photographer Sunil Gupta’s video installation titled “Love Undetectable.” The piece features a series of interviews of three queer Indian women speaking directly to the viewer.

“They’re looking at you, and saying the word ‘you,’ in the present tense, and that brings you into the narrative,” said Guthikonda.

The exhibit also aims to represent people from across the South Asian diaspora, including those of Indo-Caribbean students — a decision that motivated SAYI to reach out to the House.

“We reached out to the House to host our exhibition here, as the House is not only representative of  Caribbean students, but it’s also a safe haven for multiple people of identities,” said Moosa.

On Sunday, April 6, SAYI hosted a workshop for curator Indira Abiskaroon to give a talk on how art spaces and galleries can better include and center South Asian and Indo-Caribbean work. 

Currently working as the curatorial assistant of modern and contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, she said that it’s difficult to achieve visibility without the tokenization of people. 

“The art world has yet to succeed in achieving true inclusivity,” said Abiskaroon.

She remarked on how a shared place of origin does not necessarily lead to shared beliefs; South Asians are not a monolith, she said, despite their art frequently being lumped together in art spaces.

Abiskaroon explained the “hierarchy” of Asian identities and said that East Asian art is often more prioritized in exhibit features. Oftentimes, she said, this led to exhibits focused on Asian Americans to center on East Asian diasporas.  

Fielding questions from the audience, Abiskaroon said that as a curator, she looks to build personal relationships with South Asian and Indo-Caribbean artists. 

She described this partnership as a “mutual investment,” through which both parties could work together to change the exploitative practices of galleries.  

Guthikonda stated she designed the exhibit to give each story its own voice. She personalized the exhibit for each of the artists to emphasize the different cultures within the South Asian diaspora. 

Moosa hopes the art exhibit will be expanded in future conferences to make space for Indo-Carribeans and other communities that are “entangled” in the South Asian diaspora. 

“I hope that this art exhibit is one of many for the future of SAYI, and I hope that this conference, this year, sets a precedent of recognizing what other forms of programming that we can include and the different audiences that we can include in those programming,” said Moosa. 

Formed by South Asian student leaders at Yale and Columbia, the conference was named the South Asian Millennials Conference before eventually adopting its current name. 

The post “It’s an uprooting and a reclaiming of our roots”: South Asian Youth Initiative opens exhibition at Af-Am House appeared first on Yale Daily News.