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Highlights of the Collections
March
2001 -- Special Tercentennial Edition
Yale
began with a collection of books, and since 1701, an astounding
array of objects have entered the University's holdings, which are
invaluable for teaching and research. From millions of items, the
curators offer a selection of their favorites:
Yale
Gallery of Art
The Yale Center for British Art
Sterling
Memorial Library
Yale Collection of American Literature
Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library
Engineering and Applied Science Library
Historical Medical Library
Divinity Library
Collection of Musical Instruments
The Peabody Museum of Natural History
Yale Gallery of Art
Vincent
van Gogh
The Night Cafe, 1888
Thomas Eakins
John Biglin in a Single Scull, 1874
John Trumbull
The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, 1787-1820
Goddard or Townsend
family craftsmen
Desk and Bookcase, c. 1760-85
Benjamin West
Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, 1768
Dan People
Ivory Coast or Liberia Mask, late 19th-early 20th century
Henry Moore
Draped Seated Woman, 1957-58
Mark
Rothko
Untitled, 1954
Edward
Hopper
Sunlight in a Cafeteria, 1958
Pablo
Picasso
First Steps, 1943
Kasimir Malevich
The Knife Grinder, 1912
Walker Evans
Alabama Sharecropper's Wife, 1936
Julia Margaret
Cameron
Untitled (Portrait of a Woman), c. 1860
Marcel Duchamp
Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics), 1920
Unknown
Chinese potter
Hawthorn vase, Ch'ing Dynasty (1662-1722)
The
Yale Center for British Art
Canaletto
Warwick Castle, c. 1748-49
Thomas Gainsborough
Mr. & Mrs. John Gravenor and Their Daughters, Elizabeth and Ann, 1750
William Hogarth
The Beggar's Opera III, xi, 1729
Sir John Everett
Millais
L'Enfant du Regiment (The Random Shot)
Joshua Reynolds
Mrs. Abington as Miss Prue in Congreve's Love for Love, 1771
George Stubbs
A Zebra, 1763
J.M.W. Turner
Dort or Dordrecht: the Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed, 1817-18
Joseph Wright
of Derby
The Blacksmith's Shop, 1771
Sterling
Memorial Library
African
Collection
The Howell Wright collection
of books, manuscripts and photos on the early history of modern Southern Africa.
The papers of Mary Henrietta Kingsley, 1897-1900, that document her travels
throughout West Africa. The Karis-Gerhart Collection of South Africa Ephemera
and the Gail M. Gerhart collection of documents relating to the Pan Africanist
Congress of South Africa (1944-1979) and the black consciousness movement of
South Africa (1967-1979).
Arts of the Book
Collection
Contemporary artists' books, student printing from the Bibliographical Press,
and the original wood blocks used by master printer Fritz Eichenberg.
Babylonian
Collection
The world's oldest cookbook, which dates from the old Babylonian period (ca.
1800 BC) and includes recipes for stews and soups.
A chapter from the
world's oldest written story: the epic of Gilgamesh.
A mathematical proof
that shows how to calculate the diagonal of a square and predates the work of
Pythagoras by some 1,200 years.
Yale
Collection of American Literature
Papers of The
Dial magazine, 1920-1929, including a typescript of T. S. Eliot's The
Waste Land; the papers of Eugene O'Neill, America's only Nobel Laureate
dramatist; and a copy of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America by
Anne Bradstreet (London, 1650) -- the first book published by an American woman.
Beinecke
Rare Books & Manuscripts Library
The
Gutenberg Bible, printed circa 1455 and one of
22 complete copies of the first book set in moveable type.
Two
copies of the double-elephant folio-sized edition of Birds of North America by John James Audubon.
Western Americana
Collection
The Field Maps of the Lewis and Clark expedition: 83 manuscript maps and related
material, dating from ca. 1803 to 1810, that detail the route of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition to the Pacific Coast and back, 1804-1806. 19th century manuscript
diaries and journals recording the overland journeys and around the Horn by
sea voyages of pioneers to California and Oregon. Manuscripts, books, prints
and photographs concerning the Mexican War.
East Asia Collection
Komonjo harimaze byobu: 27 original Japanese documents written by government officials and religious
personnel between 1192 and 1747 and pasted on 2 double screens.
Floscvli/Ex Veteris,
Ac Novi/Testamenti, S. Doctorvm/Et Jisignivm
Philosopho-/Rvm
Floribvs Selecti. This book of religious and moral teachings in Latin to
aid missionary efforts was produced by the Jesuit Mission Press which was in
operation from 1590 to 1614 in Kyushu, Japan.
Hyakumanto dharani: five small wooden pagodas that contain 4 original dharani -- Buddhist Sanskrit
charms (in Chinese translation) printed between 764 and 770 in Japan in an imperial
project to seek a spiritual protection of the land.
Engineering
and Applied Science Library
Electronic
resources such as access to thousands of full-text electronic journals, including hundreds of titles that are not available in
print format, and searchable databases such as the ACM Digital Library and IEEE
Xplore.
Historical
Medical Library
Fasciculus
medicinae: with: Consilium pro peste evitanda/Pietro da Tossignano;
and Anatomia corporis humani/Mondino dei Luzzi. Venice :
Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, 5 February 1493 to 94.
Dioscorides Pedanius,
of Anazarbos.
De herbis masculinis et feminis [and other botanical and zoological works, including the Herbarium
of Apuleius]. Lombardy, Italy; about 1400.
The Harvey Cushing
Collection of Books and Manuscripts
Manuscript 23, which written in red and black ink on vellum, with numerous hand-colored
drawings of plants and animals.
Lam Qua's portraits of patients under the care of Peter Parker, M.D., a physician who practiced
medicine in Canton, China, in the 1840s.
Divinity
Library
The Day Missions Collection of printed material that records the history of Christian missions,
as well as the literature produced by the peoples to whom the missionaries went.
Collection
of Musical Instruments
Guitarby Joachim Tielke, Hamburg, 1702.
Theorbo-Lute by Sebastian Schelle, Nurnberg, 1726.
Tenor Viol by Pietro Guarneri, Mantua 1689.
Grand Piano by John Broadwood & Sons, London 1842.
Harpsichord by Francois-Etienne Blanchet the Elder, Paris, ca. 1740.
The
Peabody Museum of Natural History
Specimens of a
"living fossil" fish called a coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the
skeleton of a quagga (Equus quagga), an extinct mammal, and the skin
of a huia (Heteralocha acutirostris), an extinct bird.
A "giant" deepwater
marine isopod (the group also includes the terrestrial sowbugs and pillbugs)
belonging to the genus Anuropus, and one of only a few in museum collections.
Birdwing butterflies (Genus Ornithoptera) -- natives of the South Pacific that are large,
strikingly colored in velvety greens, blues, and yellows, and in flight resemble
birds.
A chimu-Inca bronze
knife collected by Hiram Bingham at Machu Picchu during the 1912 Yale Peruvian
Scientific Expedition.
Stibnite crystals, some over two feet long, acquired in 1884 by Yale geologist E.S. Dana, from
the Ichinokawa mine on Shikoku Island, Japan. (Stibnite powder was used by the
ancient Romans as eyelid makeup.)
Deinonychus antirrhopus, a feathered dinosaur from before the origin of flight.
Icaronycteris
index, one of the earliest and most complete bat fossils.
Rhamphorhynchus
phyllurus, an early fish-eating marine flying pterosaur.
A trilobite, Olenellus
getzi, one of the oldest multicellular animals in the fossil record, that
was collected by an Amish farmer in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
A fossil dragonfly, Dunbaria fasciipennis, collected in Kansas in 1923, that influenced studies
of the evolution of flight.
Fossilized worm
burrows, 1.1 billion years old, that suggest advanced invertebrate animals existed far earlier in time than was previously thought.
The Weston, CT, meteorite, which struck the ground in 1807. The first documented fall of
a meteorite in North America was chronicled by Benjamin Silliman, Yale's first
professor of science.
The Dolland telescope, built in England and in the early 1830s housed in an observatory atop an Old
Brick Row building. Astronomers Denison Olmstead and Elias Loomis used it to
become the first in North America to observe the return of Halley's Comet in
1835.
Cycadoidea dacotensis, the evolutionary precursor of today's flowering plants.
A 2,000 year old
cylindrical pottery vessel painted with red and white chevron designs from
the Caribbean archeology collection, much of it assembled over the last 70 years
by Irving Rouse, the Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology Emeritus.
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