“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.

Chap’s play follows traditional absurdist theatrical convention to discover the lengths four boys — Drew, Micheal, Toby and Errol — will go to complete a pledge task: fucking a goat.

Chap’s play focuses on characters Michael — Wyatt Fishman ’27 — a brash, masculine, carries-a-big-stick personality; Drew — Leo Levitt ’28 — his level headed high school friend; Toby, a conscientious but out-of-place personality — Shivraj Singh ’28 — and Errol — Harry Lowitz ’28 — a comedic pledge consumed by the shame of his own virginity and the allure of male comradery. 

Among a media climate that has seen the resurgence of stories about female-friendships like “Girls” or “Sex and the City,” “Fuck the Goat” prompts a lot of reflection on the dearth of friendship stories between men. Would we even watch a show about four guys just talking to each other? 

Most friendship-centric media featuring men revolves around adolescence: “Stand by Me,” “Goonies,” “The Sandlot.” But why are there so few depictions of what these spirited adolescent friendships might have grown into as their characters move into early adulthood? 

One of the play’s strongest elements is Toby being explicitly gay. Toby regales the other boys with the story of his high school girlfriend, only to reveal that he’s actually only dated her because it felt like an apt performance of social ritual. 

The girlfriend, strategically on Chap’s part, is never named. Toby says that he was never in love with her; though in the same breath, claims that “It would’ve killed me to not have her around.”

This sparks an immense debate about the boundaries between intimate friendship and romantic love — and Errol’s expositive interest in Toby’s high school sex life. Singh’s character also sticks out as the most nuanced: a convention-obsessed frat bro who was somehow raised by liberal Californians who do tantric yoga and use charcoal toothpaste. 

Toby’s character as a whole is subtle but invokes a deep curiosity about how he has become the person he is in the play. How could someone raised by such progressive parents still become trapped by such a monolithic performance of masculinity? 

While Chap only includes one openly gay character, Toby’s sexuality presents the audience with a kind of red herring. She tricks the audience into ascribing heterosexual identities to the other boys because there couldn’t possibly be more than one gay character in a four-person fraternity play. 

Because of this, viewers nearly miss the homoerotic undercurrent of Micheal and Drew’s friendship. After Errol pukes on Micheal during a game of poker, Drew takes off his shirt to clean up after them.

Drew’s urge to expend his own resources to clean up after Micheal and Errol — an action later compounded by a monologue about Micheal’s lack of care for their friendship — presents Drew as deeply domestic. 

His character ends up being pretty derivative of Ralph from Lord of the Flies who, even in the face of world collapse, can only bring himself to focus on his friendship with Jack. 

Both the best writing and acting in the show is one of Errol’s monologues — the crux of which is essentially, “Why do we have to pretend to like each other all the time?”  

The commentary on the social performance to which fraternities commit themselves, making the brotherhood seem bigger than it is. The play also points to the ritual of social performance that men commit to in individual friendships; why is the axis of so many male friendships suffering? And why do men go to such lengths to impress each other? 

“Fuck the Goat” prompts us to wonder at the efforts and stakes involved in male friendship. Men may not seek out community due to necessity, but why must men take elephant walks and eat live goldfish to make friends? 

In her playwright’s note, Chap concedes that “[her] own friendships with boys are a slim testament to what they have with each other.” Much of what Chap finds so mystifying about male friendship is her lack of interiority to male friendships compared to those between women. 

Even in close friendships with men, she writes, her experiences with them are initially screened through her female identity. “Fuck the Goat” is a best guess at the landscape of male platonic intimacy — a faint but protective estimate of something so enigmatic you can only comprehend if you live it yourself.

The post REVIEW: In Fuck the Goat, “Sex and the City” meets “Lord of the Flies” in a frat basement appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Along with “Tracy Emin: I Loved You Until the Morning,” the two exhibits coincide with the reopening of the Yale Center for British Art after its two-year closure for renovations. Encompassing the building’s third-floor galleries, the works allow viewers to circulate throughout the chronological trajectory of Turner’s artistic focus. 

“What I sought to bring out in this show, hence the title as well, ‘Romance and Reality,’ the conflation of all these different ideas about the world coming together,” said Lucinda Lax, the curator of paintings and sculpture at the YCBA. “On the one hand, you’ve got the classic sublime, the monumental … then you’ve also got this kind of engagement with the everyday, the quotidian.” 

The exhibit demonstrates Turner’s close study of architectural and topographical details beginning early in his career. His work explores landscapes in the same European pictorial tradition that he was raised in and exposed to during his travels around the continent. 

Many of the paintings on display are emblematic of Turner’s exploration of various European landscapes, ranging from sleepy British ports to fiery Vesuvian explosions. 

“Turner being Turner, his ambition is to surpass those traditions and move beyond,” said Lax. “You see this profound shift taking place … which is something that he learns so early on in his career. But you know it’s the melding of past and present, it’s all these contrasts.” 

The exhibit brings together multiple different mediums through which Turner explored his visions of the European landscape of industrialization. Beyond his paintings, imbued with his signature tension and emotion, the exhibit features many of his watercolors and his etchings, of which the collection has “over 3,000 prints by or after Turner,” according to Lax. 

“The exhibition offers a remarkable opportunity to experience one of the finest collections of Turner’s works outside the U.K. Showcasing a diverse range of media—including drawings, sketches, paintings, watercolors and prints—it provides a comprehensive perspective on Turner’s career-long engagement with modernity and its contradictions,” wrote Caterina Franciosi GRD ’26 in an email to the News. 

Throughout the exhibit, one can notice Turner’s drift towards abstraction. He explores atmospheric romanticism, coinciding with the rapidly changing landscape and economy of England and Europe during the early 19th century. 

Take, for example, “Staffa: Fingal’s Cave (c. 1832),” which portrays a ship pulling a black cloud of coal and an amber sun on the horizon through almost supernatural, atmospheric effects. 

“The painting exemplifies Turner’s ability to transform personal observation into a profound meditation on humanity’s place within the forces of nature, the cosmos, and the environmental residues of fossil-fueled progress,” wrote Franciosi. 

Beyond exploring Turner’s vivid landscape compositions, his miniature watercolors of various European and English locales also depict actual places and events as well as classical scenes. 

The exhibit’s chronology takes the viewer to the end of Turner’s career, with dreamy, bright paintings that affirm the trends of abstraction, emotion and raw beauty he tended towards throughout his prolific career. 

Beyond these breathtaking paintings, the YCBA has also put Turner’s last sketchbook on display. It contains scenes straight from Turner’s hand before his death. 

The YCBA offers a replica of the book in the store and a collection of postcards replicated from the sketchbook. 

“I really like the exhibit so far because I’m a huge fan of paintings in nature and of scenery. I think that being able to see more nature depicted in art makes me feel closer to the world, to the earth,” said Madison Butchko ’26.

The Yale Center for British Art is located at 1080 Chapel St.

Correction, April 2: A previous version of the article misspelled Caterina Franciosi’s last name.

The post The most extensive North American collection of J.M.W. Turner’s works now at the YCBA appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Motivated by disaster and by pain, these two juniors at Yale College turned to artistic creation. Combining their prior expertise, they’ve organized an upcoming gallery titled, Palette to Purpose. The theme: “What is your ecological vision?” 

Visual artists from the University and greater New Haven created pieces and were grouped with a musician or an engineer to add a nonvisual aspect to their artwork, whether it be through music or through touch. One showing will be March 24 to March 31 in the Ezra Stiles College art gallery. The second showing will be April 28 in the Yale Club of New York City.

“You feel emotion when you listen to music. You feel emotion when you look at a painting,” Young said. “If you mix two, you’re able to, kind of like, create this bridge between different senses that is all towards one goal, which is environmental advocacy and climate change awareness.”

Drawing inspiration

A self-described climate artist, Young is no stranger to activism. She has created art in the wake of disaster and has traveled to different countries to interview community members about their climate stories, which she then creates paintings of.

Young also founded a nonprofit called Relief after Disaster in high school, and won a United Nations Millennium Fellowship to help her kick off the inaugural Palette to Purpose exhibition in 2024.

Jain, a singer since age four, attended an arts high school. Growing up, her house was “always filled with music” — her brother playing Indian drums, her singing, songs playing on speaker.

Jain previously conducted research on music therapy for people with visual impairments. She found strong links between art therapy and how it improved mental health in low vision individuals. 

“Arts are very visual by nature,” Jain explained. “We came up with this concept of a multidimensional art exhibit where not only you were consuming art by looking at it, but you’re also engaging the other senses.”

In 2019, Jain founded a nonprofit called EyeMatter to make the arts more accessible for the low vision community. She was inspired by collections in the New York Public Library that feature Braille and Talking Book Library, which makes written works more accessible to the blind.

Through a partnership with the World Wildlife Foundation, or WWF, the Palette to Purpose organizers are ensuring the creators create fact-checked art. Each pair of visual and tactile/musical artists works with a WWF educator who ensures their work is backed by science. 

Funds from the art sale and gallery will go toward Direct Relief and Anekant Community Center, an organization that provides free cataract surgery in countries like India and Kenya.

The musician and the maker

Dahlia Kordit ’28 creates visual art with various physical mediums. She learned about Palette to Purpose through Yale Visual Artists and felt a call to get involved. 

“I always try to push myself in new directions when I am creating a work of art. For me, this often means using materials in new ways that add to the meaning of my work,” Kordit told the News. “Since this exhibition is centered around the climate, I decided that it would be best to incorporate recycled materials into whatever I make.”

Kordit experimented with three-dimensionality, incorporating an old canvas and various material scraps into her piece.

The final product incorporates paper mache, “a technique that [she] had never tried before” but she feels adds both physical and symbolic depth.

Rory Bricca ’26 is the composer and improvisational pianist working with Kordit on her piece. 

He received only a draft of what Kordit envisioned — then, just a foregrounded arm holding nature in the palm of its hand, surrounded by dark clouds.

The two exchanged voice memos and offered interpretations of the piece and how each perceived the composition.

“We discussed how the fate of our planet is in our hands, how we have the power and responsibility to act,” Bricca said. “I sent her a piano improvisation with beautiful major triads in the right hand being interrupted by a dissonant bass melody, which I thought would capture this juxtaposition between the beauty of nature and the terrifying power that our species has to destroy it.”

The duo struggled initially to “bridge the gap between art and music,” according to Bricca, but with Kordit’s suitemate, a spoken word poet, they were able to come up with five phrases highlighting different aspects of the visual work and have those overarching themes carry Bricca’s piece along.

“Another detail that I really look forward to incorporating in this piece is the concept of the red string of fate, as well as tying a knot around your finger in an effort to remember something,” Kordit told the News. “It goes back to how Rory described my piece — our fate is tied to the planet, and we have to do our best to remind ourselves of that.”

Singing for climate

Zaida Rio Polanco ’26 is an environmental studies major who has been a singer-songwriter for “as long as [she] can remember.”

In 2020, Rio performed in several climate justice protest concerts. She collaborated with Young last year for OurHouse, the annual arts showcase to promote student artists of color. 

“I wrote a song called ‘Slow Violence’ about incremental changes due to climate change and how that ties to slow violence in relationships,” Rio said. “[Camila] made a live painting to it during the performance. It was really beautiful.”

The artist that Rio is working with right now for Palette to Purpose created a moving graphic design.

“If there was ever a time for the performing arts to really like come alive for social justice, climate justice, it would be now,” Rio said. “Under Trump, it’s just like … the call to action is so much more important now.”

Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment.

The post Palette to Purpose: Yale undergrads use art, music and touch to chronicle the burning world appeared first on Yale Daily News.

These two installations prompt viewers to consider how identity, power and remembrance are shaped in visual culture and what gaps exist in Yale’s institutional memory. 

The Divinity School held the exhibition’s opening reception in Croll Entrance Hall on Friday night. The school collaborated with the Beachum family to choose twenty-one pieces that explore identity, power and Black identity. All the artists in the exhibition are Yale-affiliated, with most having completed their Master of Fine Arts at the university.

“It’s just beautiful to see exhibitions like this that speak to and highlight the wide array of arts that are available at the [Divinity] School,” said Clifford Chambliss DIV ’25, president of the Visual Arts Circle student group. 

Calling the school a “premier art hub at Yale,” Chambliss emphasized its role in fostering conversations across artistic disciplines — from performing and visual arts to homiletics. He said the exhibition was a display of great skill that captures the Black experience. 

According to Tom Krattenmaker, the Divinity School’s director of communications, the exhibition is part of a new art space. The works are on display at the Croll Family Entrance Hall, which was recently remodeled as part of the Living Village residential project.

“Exhibitions like this one invite viewers to reflect on religious, social and cultural issues, prompting conversations about identity, race and spirituality,” said Sophia Spralja DIV ’26, a Divinity School student concentrating on visual art and material culture. “These works drew my attention to distinct historical events in the Black experience that might otherwise have been overlooked.”

Spralja said that viewing the exhibition inspired questions about who is mourned, who is commemorated and who remains on the margins of visibility. 

She added that the exhibition’s location in the main entryway of the Divinity School provides an important and visible opportunity to foster dialogue among peers.

As an avid soccer player herself, Spralja said she appreciated the intersection of sport and art that the Beachums are interested in.

In fact, Kelvin Beachum said that Collywobbles — a colorful mixed media piece named after the British slang term for nervousness — reminded him of his feelings each time he takes the field.  

According to Chambliss, what truly makes the exhibition special is the Beachum family’s commitment to the artists whose works they collect.

“They’re not collecting just to amass artwork, but to actually build a relationship with each artist and contribute to an ongoing dialogue,” Chambliss said.

For featured artist Torkwase Dyson ART ’03, it is time “for a new relationship with abstraction.” 

Her work draws inspiration from the architecture used by enslaved people who hid or stowed away to attain their freedom. Creating a shape system that represents various modes of movement and concealment, Dyson articulates how constraining infrastructure facilitated liberation.

Dyson described her approach as an “illegal abstraction developed out of the condition of new world-building toward liberation and revolution.” 

In “The Night is Our Friend,” Dominic Chambers ART ’19 depicts two subjects resting on the other side of a wall, inviting viewers to follow their lead in a moment of shared respite. Through his use of color and contrasts, Chambers creates a dreamlike atmosphere. 

Behind the wall his subjects are leaning against, nebulous spirits materialize — infusing the piece with elements of magical realism.

“My job is to offer my perspective as not all perspectives are told,” said Chambers of his artistic process. 

As part of the school’s broader commitment to showcasing such untold perspectives, Krattenmaker revealed a new portrait of Alexander Crummell, a prominent 19th-century Black theologian who attended Yale. 

Created by Jas Knight, a New York City-based artist native to Connecticut, the piece was unveiled on Monday, Feb. 3, at the onset of Black History Month. It will be showcased in the Divinity School’s common room, which features various portraits.

“Jas does not cut corners,” said Krattenmaker, describing the artist’s preference for using human models rather than photographs. 

For the portrait of Crummel, Knight dressed his model in authentic 1850s vestments and garments provided by the wardrobe department at the School of Drama. The portrait is housed in a hand-carved frame created by Manuel Augusto Da Costa.

In the past, the Divinity School commissioned Knight to paint James Pennington, the first African American student to attend classes at Yale. Neither Crummell nor Pennington were recognized as official Yale students during their time at the University due to racial exclusion policies that barred Black students from formal enrollment. In 2023, the University awarded them posthumous honorary master’s degrees. 

The portrait of Crummell will be a permanent fixture at the Divinity School. The Beachum family’s collection will remain on display through late March. 

The Divinity School is open to all from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The post Two new art installations at the Yale Divinity School honor the Black experience and neglected histories appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The exhibit commemorates the YCBA’s upcoming March reopening after it closed in 2023 for maintenance and renovation. Before walking through the exhibition, viewers heard from the architect supervising the reconstruction. 

“One of the things that I’ve always admired about this building is it has an extraordinary restraint and self-possession. And I think, really, that’s true of most of Kahn’s work,” said George Knight, supervising architect and a senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture. 

Dozens of people, from New Haven residents to School of Architecture students, joined Knight in anticipation for the re-opening of the YCBA. During his welcome speech, he spoke on three components of the YCBA building: the relationship between the city and the University, the connection between the “two Pennsylvanians” — Paul Mellon, the benefactor of the center, and Louis Kahn — and finally, the partnership between Yale and Kahn. 

Knight, using original materials from the exhibit, described his appreciation for Kahn’s work, before discussing the various innovative facets of its design. 

“So much of this was new and revelatory,” said Knight. “The relationships to the Yale leadership at the time, Kingman Brewster being president, Paul Mellon as patron, Jules Prowne as founding director … I think it sets up a much richer background for us all to appreciate the center when it opens,” said Knight. 

The curators responsible for the exhibition are Jessica Quagliaroli, former chief archivist for the YCBA, and Kathy Bohlman, architecture records archivist for Haas Family Arts Library Special Collections.

This exhibition served to garner attention to the space of the YCBA — even when its doors remain closed. 

“We were asked to think of open-while-closed ideas — how to make the museum’s collections and services available to the public while its physical spaces were closed,” Quagliaroli told the News.

Quagliaroli and Bohlman began putting together the exhibition in October 2023, shortly after the YCBA closed its doors. Less than a year later, “People Look Up at Good Architecture” opened in September 2023. 

According to Bohlman, usually a minimum-time of a year is allocated to curate an exhibition. However, since they wanted to have the exhibition on display before the YCBA’s reopening, they were on a tight schedule. 

Bohlman said that the entire process consists of multiple stages of research, writing, selection, layout and final design. 

“It really takes much longer than you might think it would,” said Bohlman.

This process was made even more challenging because materials related to Louis Kahn and the construction of the YCBA remain scattered across the University’s many collections.

Nevertheless, Quagliaroli and Bohlman were able to bring together pieces from the University archives, the Yale School of Architecture collections and YCBA institutional records, among others. According to Quagliaroli, the exhibition includes materials from ten different collections across four repositories. 

“ I think one of our goals was wanting to join together these materials that live in siloed collections, bring them together, and recontextualize them in a new way altogether,” said Quagliaroli.

Haas Arts Library is located at 180 York St. 

The post “People Look Up at Good Architecture” exhibit unveils the history of the YCBA building appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The installation follows the technological progression of the medium — a relatively young art form — from contact and darkroom prints to Polaroid and digital prints. According to its visitors, the gallery offers images that locate the human experience in the natural world. 

“[The dandelion orbs] are all there, hovering, together, held in space above their collective shadow,” said Kristin Eno, about Ryuji Taira’s “Bound.” “Taira’s photograph offers us a rememory of what is both the most mundane natural form and that which holds within all our childhood longings and future hopes.” 

The earliest image in the installation is “Dicksonia arborescens, Jamaica” (Ca.1850) by the British botanist Anna Atkins. It is a facsimile of her original cyanotype of a cutting from a Saint Helena tree fern. 

One visitor, Kristin Eno, was taken with this print. 

“The Anna Atkins piece drew me in and time slowed down,” she said. “I was transported back to the wonderful Atkins exhibition at the New York Public Library a few years back, which had changed me when it washed my dreams of the natural world in blue.”

The British photographer found the medium to be a more precise method of rendering natural subject matter — with a camera, Atkins was able to better capture minute details of natural forms. 

Adjacent to her print is William Henry Fox Talbot’s “Jacaranda Mimosifolia” (1857), a photographic engraving from a steel plate. It depicts the delicate foliage of a sub-tropical tree. 

Talbot himself was highly influential to the history of photography and explored images on light sensitive paper, making him one of the pioneers of darkroom work. 

Photography’s ability to reproduce incredible detail is also evident in Karl Blossfeldt’s black and white gelatin silver print, “Symphphytum Officinale (Common Comfrey),” ca. 1898-1930, printed in 1976. 

There are innumerable fine hairs on the plant, which is presented in dramatic tension with the horizontal framing — full of life and ready to burst into bloom. Blossfeldt was one of the leading photographers of the modernist New Objectivity movement of the early 20th century.

Ryuji Taira’s platinum-palladium print “Bound” (2014) drew the attention of numerous visitors. The small print is not easy to resolve at a distance.

“I was drawn to it because I saw these round shapes grouped together and had a good sense of these spheres,” said Kenneth Morford, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Medicine. 

He continued, “But when I got closer, I realized they were dandelion heads and could fall apart at any minute. I could see light streaming through them with shadows falling underneath.”

“Sunflower and Sardines, from Sardines, from the portfolio Eat” (1990), Michiko Kon’s gelatin silver print, is another work that requires careful observation. 

From across the gallery, it seems to be a tonally beautiful still life of the ordinary. However, upon closer inspection, one will notice that what appeared to be sunflower seeds in the head of the flower are actually a multitude of sardine eyes. 

Four sardine tails are interspersed among the petals.  A surrealist sensibility is at work in this print.

Sunflowers are a recurrent motif in the installation, including DoDo Jin Ming’s “#5 Blois, France from the Series Sunflower” (1994) — a negative chromogenic print. It captures a field of sunflowers against a slanting horizon line. 

The sunflower stalks extend to the top of the frame, their large heads drooping downward at the end of the growing season, seeding the ground for next year’s crop.

Martine Gutierrez’s chromogenic self-portrait, “Masking, Red Spathe Mask from the series Indigenous Woman” (2018), critiques advertising tropes to explore identity and deconstruct the industry’s objectification of sex. 

Mocking the typical spa mask, she has placed fruit over her nose and mouth. Covering her eyes are two intense red spathes, the fleshy leaves that attract pollinators to certain plants. 

Visitor Gale Zucker said that she enjoyed this print because “it combines natural elements with the human figure in a way that has more depth to it in terms of intent.”

Other works in this installation include prints by Edward Steichen, Chuck Close, Andy Warhol and Mitch Epstein. 

Viewers can plan to attend Photography and the Botanical world through June 8, 2025. 

Correction, Feb. 4: The previous version of the article misspelled Zucker’s first name. 

The post In the YUAG’s “Photography and the Botanical World,” art imitates life. Literally. appeared first on Yale Daily News.

On Jan. 13, Yale Visual Artists installed the student exhibition “Re-Presenting Ourselves” at the Schwarzman Center Well Gallery. The mural displays 27 distinct pieces superimposed onto large black and white photographs of Old Campus, Beinecke Plaza and Cross Campus — communal spaces on campus. 

“Each visual is an attempt to introduce ourselves to Yale once again, but in a more ‘us’ way,” said Davianna Inirio ’27. “To figure out, ‘well, what is that one thing, feeling, or visual, that makes me feel most like me and that which most people don’t often get to see?’”

Many of the group’s members were drawn to capturing their personal reflections of adjustment to life at Yale. In candid expressions, the artists explore ways to weave cultural imagery into each piece — through large-scale self-portraits, subtle nods to inherited family customs and nostalgic visuals that evoke home. 

The murals showcase parts of themselves that are often unseen and unspoken about in initial social encounters. 

The result is a collaborative piece that reflects the group’s shared experiences while displaying the individuality of each artist. The works seem to defy realism in favor of creativity and self-expression.

In Inirio’s work, illustrated figures of herself appear like stickers peeling off the surface of various campus sites. On one face of the mural, Inirio swings on an orange hammock from the branch of a tree in Beinecke Plaza. 

Inirio elaborated on the thematic importance of stickers and how she often feels like a sticker. She is peeled and placed in new environments and contexts, but carries with her fundamental elements of herself. 

In her artwork for the mural, she was inspired by fragments of home, which influence the way she perceives the world “no matter how large or powerful the institution, no matter how daunting and scary it may appear.” 

“And so these stickers slowly peel off on their edges, perhaps insinuating that Yale won’t be a setting in which I stay for long or perhaps insinuating that I am still adjusting and being ‘stuck onto’ the surface. They will always appear to be malleable and yet always present the same warmth from home,” said Inirio. 

According to YVA, the Schwarzman Center contacted the arts organization last year and proposed a collaboration. Following these plans, YVA considered how to connect a bunch of different styles, stories, identities and works into one cohesive piece. 

The curated exhibition represented a multiplicity of artists and styles, which speaks to YVA’s broader vision of unifying and connecting creatives at Yale. The mural encourages viewers to pause and look closer — not just at the art itself, but at the stories and individuals behind each piece. 

Positioned in the middle of the Schwarzman Underground, the exhibition is designed to be approachable and viewable to all.  

“Re-presenting Ourselves” also underscores a larger mission for YVA: to make art accessible and enjoyable for all students, regardless of background or major. 

According to YVA students, the visual arts scene at Yale can oftentimes be largely individualistic, exclusive or time-intensive. YVA hopes to offer students a low-stakes and collaborative outlet to explore their creative impulses without enrolling in art courses. 

The group’s regular activities range from selling prints and hosting casual watercolor evenings to organizing exhibitions and laid-back painting picnics. In doing so, they introduce an inclusive dimension to art at Yale, welcoming anyone eager to dive into creative work — whether or not they’re studying art formally. 

“I think what makes YVA really impactful is our ability to reach across various visual arts communities in the Yale undergraduate sphere and connect majors and non-majors,” said Kamini Purushothaman ’27, who is a staff reporter for the News.  

YVA encourages artists from a range of backgrounds and academic interests who share a passion for any forms of visual expression — whether it be 3D modelling, charcoal sketching or creating digital art. Welcoming anyone who is looking for a creative outlet, YVA has curated a space that values imagination above formal experience. 

At its core, “Re-presenting Ourselves” is as much about forging connections as it is about artistic expression. For many artists, the mural became an excuse to meet other creative minds on campus, forming a community that extended beyond the confines of the project. 

“[The pieces on display] all look very whimsical and imaginative,” Katelyn Wang ’27 said. “You know, we had someone do a Greco Roman sculpture, someone was riding in a paper airplane. They’re all very unrealistic but fun, imaginable, whimsical, fantastical.”

The Schwarzman Center is located at 168 Grove St.

The post In Schwarzman collaboration, Yale Visual Artists “re-present” themselves with a look back at freshman year  appeared first on Yale Daily News.

On Dec. 5, Abdu presented “Remember(ing) Zawiyas,” a culmination of her ethnographic research in the Medina of Sousse, Tunisia –– an archaeological complex from the early centuries of Islam in the Maghreb. The exhibition was accompanied by a panel featuring Abdu and 2024 Yale World Fellow and heritage preservation expert Soraya Hosni, moderated by Yale Divinity School Lecturer Abdul Rehman Malik. 

“Observing the different state of the buildings–abandoned, repurposed and fully in use–guided my questioning of space, sacredness, and heritage revitalization,” Abdu said. “Space becomes sacred through rituals and care, but what happens when that care fades?”

Abdu met Hosni through her fellowship as a student researcher with The New Medina, which Hosni founded. The New Medina is a creative and research-focused residency that seeks to revive the world’s Old Cities and heritage sites. 

Hosni’s research centers around sacred Islamic architecture, where Sufi traditions once thrived. She mentored Abdu during her fieldwork.

“[Abdu’s project] was the beginning of a beautiful collaboration for our archival initiative and for spearheading our revitalization project,” Hosni shared in her curator’s statement. “I see potential – not just for preservation, but for revival.”

Hosni described the exhibit as “the brainchild of our collaboration.” She said she helped Abdu select the larger ideas, photographs and clips that are currently exhibited at the Afro American Cultural Center’s second-floor gallery.

The gallery is managed by Kadjata Bah ’26, who advocated for using the space more. According to Bah, the space exists for students like Abdu, “who have amazing artistic talent and the potential to make their own mark.”

“When we received Sityana’s proposal, we were excited to work with her right off the bat,” said Bah.

This exhibit invites viewers to engage topics such as heritage preservation, the relationship between space and spirituality, and future-facing revitalization.

Abdu recounts how documenting tangible aspects of Islamic culture, as well as the caretakers who preserved them, deepened her appreciation for her faith and its role in “creating spaces of belonging and connection.”

According to Abdu, she felt convicted to thoroughly capture the remnants of these spaces in her photos –– a conviction, Abdu said, that seemed divine.

Her archival efforts may help to make future restoration projects possible, should any initiative or institution desire to revive these sites.

“If these practices wanted to be replicated, there’s now visual evidence of it,” she said. 

Along with the zawiyas, of equal importance to Abdu were the women critical to preserving the spiritual culture there. They welcomed visitors, guided rituals and maintained the physical space.

According to Abdu, it was a tradition commonly passed down through the mothers.

“The women are the custodians and caretakers of heritage,” observes Abdu.

During her research, Abdu realized that their significance was often unrecognized by the larger community. Intentionally, Abdu chose to only interview the women who tended to the sites, and in doing so, celebrated their commitment as the keyholders to ancient knowledge and practices.

Abdu hopes that the exhibit will challenge visitors to reflect on their own family and community stories and to view heritage as an intentional act of preservation.

“Heritage is not just what we inherit, it’s what we choose to preserve,” said Abdu.

Noting the ongoing violence in the world, she continued and said that culture and heritage are often the first casualties of war. Yet, they can also be lost through human neglect, she said. And once heritage is lost, it is hard to bring it back.

“Remember(ing) Zawiyas” will run from Dec. 5 to 11, 2024. Show hours are 4 to 9 p.m. Monday-Friday and 12 to 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. 

The post Sityana Abdu’s ’26 exhibition celebrates women as custodians of sacred sites appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The exhibit features artwork from two initiatives organized by the Collective for Refugee and Immigrant Women’s Wellbeing, or CRIW. This project supports Afghan women in expressing themselves through photography and hand-sewn “story cloths.” 

Photovoice project: a simple yet powerful message

The “Photovoice” project, the first part of the exhibit, features a series of photographs taken by women from rural Afghanistan who currently live in New Haven. The images reflect themes of identity, belonging and home. 

The photos are accompanied by captions, which are excerpts from the women’s interviews conducted in Pashto and translated into English. 

Many photographs explore the process of creating a sense of home in a new country, far from one’s homeland. The photograph above, taken by an Afghan woman under the pseudonym Razia, shows her 1-year-old daughter. 

In a caption beneath the photograph, Razia explains that it was important for her to make their home in the U.S. feel like their home in Afghanistan. 

“This is my daughter,” the caption reads. “She is 12 months old. I just gave her a bath and put her in nice clothes. She is showing off that she can stand up!” 

Another, taken by a woman under the pseudonym Sahra, reflects a deep sense of cultural pride. Afghanistan’s red, green and black flag, which is banned by the Taliban regime, hangs on the walls of her living room and reminds her and her kids of their origins. 

Her Afghan roots are also displayed by the room decor captured in the photograph. The pillows and other decorations seen in the photographs are handmade by Sahra. 

The exhibit also offers glimpses into the women’s rich cultural traditions. One photograph features a plate full of naan. The caption below reads: “This is traditional bread, which my mom taught me how to make. I think of my mom in Afghanistan whenever I make this bread.” 

Other photos in this exhibit highlight henna designs, homemade food spreads and decorative clothing.

Faith is another central theme. One photograph captures a child reading the Quran. Beneath, the caption explains the artist’s joy in sharing religion with her children. “I was afraid that by coming to the U.S., our children would not learn about our religion, but they are learning, and that makes me feel happy and proud,” reads the caption.

In Razia’s second photograph, her 15-year-old daughter stands next to a pile of books. The image speaks to the Taliban’s outlawing of education for Afghan girls and women, according to the caption. 

Rachele Pierro, co-founder of CRIW and one of the organizers of the “Photovoice” project, explained the choice of photography as a medium. Due to Taliban restrictions, many of the women involved in the project were unable to attend any school and cannot read or write. 

“Photography is very immediate — you don’t need any filters or much training to make art in this way,” said Pierro. 

CRIW’s co-founders, Hossna Samadi, Donna Golden and Pierro, began the project by visiting a local park popular among New Haven’s Afghan community. There, they found many women who expressed interest in joining. 

The participating artists eventually gathered in discussion groups to guide the project and attended a workshop on photography and symbolism led by local artist Odette Chavez Mayo. Pierro noted that instead of focusing on challenges or hardships — of which there are many — the women decided that they wanted the project to highlight their identity. 

“They said, ‘We want everybody here to know who we are.’ It was a powerful message,” recalled Pierro. 

Storycloths project: landscapes and family dinners sewn into memory

In addition to “Photovoice,” the library hosted the “Storycloths” art initiative, led by local Afghan-Canadian artist Hangama Amiri ART ’20. “Storycloths” explores similar themes seen in the “Photovoice” project, but takes on these stories through sewing and patchwork. 

For Amiri, a refugee herself, this artistic endeavor was deeply emotional. Many of the participating women had only recently arrived in the U.S., said Amiri, which meant that the experience of losing their home was “still very fresh.” 

“In some conversations during the workshop, many participants cried. It was very emotional for me as well, as I am also a refugee. It was striking to hear the women’s memories and their core understanding of what it means for them to live in this country.” 

The women created hand-sewn representations of Afghan landscapes, family figures and memories of things they no longer have — such as trees from their homeland or family dinners from years ago. 

Amiri explained that many of the women had never drawn before but excelled at hand-sewing. 

“I think the concept of home might sound very simple or straightforward, but the meaning that comes from it can be very heavy sometimes,” Amiri reflected. “It really depends on who you are talking to.” 

The “Storycloths” project can be viewed here.

A growing partnership

The partnership between CRIW and the Wilson Branch Library began in 2021 when CRIW, in collaboration with Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, or PRCH, initiated a women’s leadership group at the library. This project stemmed from a desire to support Afghan families following the fall of Kabul, the country’s capital, to the Taliban in August 2021. 

Upon their arrival, many Afghan families settled in the Hill neighborhood of New Haven. 

As the leadership group developed, it became clear that access to English language classes was a priority. 

“Many programs were not meeting the needs of this population due to barriers like transportation and childcare,” said Pierro. In response, CRIW, Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, Havenly and New Haven Adult Education partnered to create a women-only English as a Second Language class, which provides childcare services, all within walking distance of where many of the families live. 

According to Meghan Currey, the Wilson Library Branch Manager, the art exhibit drew in many families and community members for a “sharing of cultures.” The exhibit’s opening event included translators, food and local immigration focused nonprofits. 

In addition to offering a space for cultural sharing, Amiri said that the exhibit gave these women a platform to speak. 

“I think about this kind of work as being about creating space for unheard voices to speak, and to share their side of the stories,” said Amiri. “I feel that there’s kind of a concept of silence that is happening in our society right now, and so this is about more than just art; it’s about making room for these women’s experiences in the world.” 

The exhibit is on display at the Wilson Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library until Dec. 4. 

The post Afghan women explore themes of home and memory through exhibit at Wilson Branch Library appeared first on Yale Daily News.