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Art school's new gallery promotes art from abroad
February 9, 2009
by Carole
Bass '83, '97MSL
©Jacqueline Nelson
It is, so far, one of Yale's well-kept secrets: a not-quite-rectangular building that looks a bit like a modernist barn, with cedar siding and tall grasses growing on the roof.
Peer through the story-high front windows, and there is no doubt that this is an art gallery. Paintings, photographs, sculptures, and a video installation fill the 3,000-square-foot space.
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The gallery space is spare, even stark—architecture as backdrop.
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But the university's newest gallery—on Edgewood Avenue, just west of the central campus—has a hybrid identity. While it is an exhibition space, it is also a student training ground. While it is part of the School of Art's new home, it will rarely show student work. (And while it is open to the public, the front door is locked: the allen wrench that will allow it to stay open has not yet arrived.)
The building opened in 2007 as part of a new complex that also includes a 51,000-square-foot studio building for the sculpture department and a public parking garage with storefront retail space. But the gallery and studio building were first occupied by the architecture school, which needed a home while its landmark building at York and Chapel streets was being renovated. After the art school took possession of the gallery over the past winter break, dean Robert Storr and painting student Jaret Vadera '09MFA hustled to put together the school's first exhibition at 32 Edgewood Avenue.
Like the building itself, the exhibition is a hybrid. Called "Shifting Shapes—Unstable Signs" and featuring work from India and the Indian diaspora, it illustrates, Storr says, that "there is no such thing as Indian art per se."
The idea arose from conversations between Storr and Vadera. With a Punjabi father and Filipino mother, Vadera felt that he "couldn't fit anybody's national/cultural/what-have-you definitions," Storr notes. So student and dean put together a show that encompasses all media and many styles. "All the artists, in one way or another, are messing up categories," the dean declares.
The gallery will focus on introducing contemporary international work "that won't be shown in New York" or other major art centers, Storr says. "Yale has two great art museums. But most of what they have is great historical work. We thought it would be helpful to have other things come here."
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The gallery offers a hands-on way to "learn what curators do."
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That emphasis on showing new, contemporary, non-North American art is one facet of the gallery's hybrid purpose. Another facet is education: each exhibition will be organized and installed by faculty and students.
"They know how to make art," Storr says of the students, "but they don't necessarily know how to present it." The gallery offers a hands-on way to "learn what curators do. There's no standard height for hanging art. There's no formula. This is an exercise in visual thinking. It's a place for exhibition, and it's a place for practice."
The building itself, designed by Kieran Timberlake Associates of Philadelphia, is an architectural showpiece. Together with the sculpture studios and parking garage, the building earned Connecticut's first platinum-level LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for its energy efficiency and green roof. Yet the gallery space is spare, even stark.
That's by design, Storr says, to provide maximum flexibility. A noted curator who was responsible for scores of major exhibitions at New York City's Museum of Modern Art and elsewhere, he arrived at Yale in 2006, as the new sculpture building and gallery were breaking ground. The architects had drawn up a "much more traditional" museum-type design for the gallery, complete with mezzanine.
"I said, 'Stop the presses,'" he recounts. "What I did was basically simplify the design so we could have more flexibility." The floor, for example, can accommodate bolts for temporary walls so that the space can be reconfigured. The big front windows can be taken out, providing access for oversized artworks.
The result is a space as bare and plain as possible—architecture as backdrop. Asked for a tour, Storr replies simply: "This is all there is to see."
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