The Yale University Art Gallery has contributed nearly 2,000 images of its global permanent collection to the Artstor Digital Library. The selection consists of a range of highlights from varied curatorial areas, with a concentration of about 250 images of the Art Gallery’s outstanding African Art collection.

The extensive holdings of the Art Gallery are broadly represented in the Artstor Digital Library from prehistory through contemporary, and across the continents, as demonstrated by a sampling of a prehistoric cycladic figurine, medieval Chinese ceramics, celebrated highlights in Western painting, and modern photography and contemporary sculpture.

The Yale University Art Gallery was founded in 1832 with the gift of more than 100 paintings belonging to artist John Trumbull. Since then, the Art Gallery’s permanent collection has grown to include over 250,000 works, divided among ten curatorial departments. Previously dispersed in various locations, Yale’s art collections were first united in 1928. The museum reopened in 1953 as the Yale University Art Gallery and Design Center, in a new building designed by architect Louis I. Kahn (recently restored). The second floor of the Art Gallery features a new permanent gallery devoted to the arts of Africa housing the Charles B. Benenson collection, noted for its selection of ritual figures and masks from West and Central Africa. The Benenson collection, acquired in 2004 as one of the largest single gifts of art to the university, transformed the Art Gallery into one of the most important repositories of African art in the United States.