YALE UNIVERSITY TO INSTALL NUMISMATIC EXHIBIT

The Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven, Connecticut, the oldest and one of the most important university art museums in America, is in the final phase of a renovation and expansion that will transform the visitor experience of both the museum and its esteemed collections. The project will enable the Gallery not only to enhance its role as one of the nation's most prominent teaching institutions but also to join the ranks of the country's leading public art museums. The expanded Gallery will open in December 2012.

When complete, the expanded gallery will contain 69,975 square feet of exhibition space (enlarged from 40,266 square feet prior to the expansion) and will occupy the length of one-and-a-half city blocks. With new areas for exhibitions and object study, combined with a comprehensive plan for public and educational programming, the project will vastly increase access to the Gallery's encyclopedic collections.

On completion of the expansion, the Gallery will be able to install a vastly larger portion of its collections than heretofore possible. The current installation of European art displayed some 135 works; the new galleries will feature about 350. Moreover, visitors will also see numerous objects that have never before been shown at the Gallery. This will include a new installation of Indo-Pacific art, comprising ethnographic sculptures from Southeast Asia, medieval Javanese gold, and textiles from Indonesia, which will establish the Gallery as one of the country's leaders in this field.

An extensive new installation of coins and medals has been enabled by the transfer of the University's Numismatics Collection to the Gallery from Yale's Sterling Memorial Library. A rare group of late 19th-century lunettes and ceiling murals- donated to the Gallery after they were removed from the Collis Huntington mansion on Fifth Avenue when it was demolished in 1926-have been restored and will be on view for the first time. In addition to new displays, recently acquired objects from all collection areas-including Japanese screens, African antiquities, Roman portraits, 19th-century American painting, and contemporary sculptures, among many other examples-will be on view throughout the Gallery.

To read the complete article, see: Transformed Yale University Art Gallery to open in December 2012 (www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=53467)

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