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The Yale University Art Gallery and the Peabody Museum of Natural History (Yale University)
Overview
The Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History are partnering with ARTstor to make over 36,000 images from their collections and photography collections available through the Digital Library. Through this collaboration, the Art Gallery and the Peabody Museum seek to provide greater access to their unique permanent collections. The collections in the ARTstor Digital Library will bring together materials currently housed separately at Yale institutions to develop a digital collection devoted to African Art and Yale sponsored archaeological expeditions. ARTstor is also sponsoring a pilot project to produce three-dimensional imagery for 10 African objects, five from the Art Gallery’s collection and five from the Peabody Museum’s collection.
The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University
A selection of approximately 1,000 highlights from the Peabody Museum of Natural History's permanent collection will be added to ARTstor, including photographs of specimens of dinosaurs and mammals and depictions of the same in the famous murals that adorn the Museum's Great Hall, Age of Reptiles and Age of Mammals by Rudolph Franz Zallinger (1919–1995). These objects are extensively documented in the Museum's archive, which also includes materials related to the history of the Museum. The Museum will contribute approximately 10,000 images from its archival collections, a majority of which will consist of archaeological and ethnographic objects from throughout the Caribbean, including Antigua, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Trinidad, the Dominican Republic and other islands, as well as northern South America.
The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University was founded in 1866, through a gift from philanthropist George Peabody. That same year, Peabody's nephew, Othniel Charles Marsh, who had persuaded his uncle to make the donation, went on to become the Peabody Museum's first director and the first Professor of Paleontology at Yale University. After Peabody's death in 1869, Marsh used the inheritance from his uncle to begin assembling a collection of animal specimens, archeological objects, and ethnological artifacts. In 1898, Marsh donated his collections to Yale University, further enlarging the Museum's collections, which soon outgrew its original building. By 1925, the Museum moved to its current location, which boasts a two-story Great Hall large enough to display Marsh's massive dinosaur skeletons. Today, the Museum's permanent collection includes over 11 million specimens in anthropology, botany, entomology, geology, mineralogy, ornithology, paleobotany, paleontology, zoology, planetary science, and historical scientific instruments.
The Yale University Art Gallery
A selection of approximately 1,000 highlights from the Yale University Art Gallery's permanent collection will be added to ARTstor. The Art Gallery will also be contributing a set of images from its collection of African art. They will be joined by a set of African objects currently housed at the Peabody Museum. In bringing these objects together through ARTstor, both the Museum and the Gallery aim to unite their disparate, but complementary, collections into a single online archive. Thus, the Art Gallery's strength in African sculpture will be enhanced by the Peabody Museum's collection of textiles, costumes, basket and bead work, weapons, tools, and ritual objects. To further augment this integrated archive of approximately 600 images, ARTstor is also sponsoring a pilot project to produce three–dimensional imagery for 10 African objects, five from each repository. The Art Gallery will be also be contributing approximately 24,000 images of artifacts related to the Dura–Europos and Gerasa archaeological expeditions, which were sponsored by Yale University. Another 150 images of parchment and papyrus documents from Dura-Europos now at the The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library will also be added.
The Art Gallery's collection of Ancient Art is best known for the important finds that stemmed from excavations at Dura-Europos in Syria and Gerasa in Jordan. The Art Gallery will be contributing materials related to both expeditions from its photographic archives: approximately 10,000 images of artifacts from Dura–Europos and 14,000 images of objects Gerasa. In conjunction with the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles–Lettres, Yale University sponsored excavations at Dura–Europos, Syria from 1928–1937. Located on the Euphrates river, the city of Europos was founded during the Hellenistic period (c. 300 BCE), eventually being absorbed into the Arsacid Parthian empire during the 1st century BCE. Known to local people as Dura, “the fortress,” the city also passed through Roman rule before being destroyed by the Sassanian Persians around 256 AD. The archive at the Art Gallery documents Graeco-Roman and Parthian culture at Dura-Europos, as illustrated by images of its art, architecture, and everyday objects from the daily lives of its inhabitants. Similarly, the Gerasa archive at the Art Gallery illuminates the excavations at Gerasa, Jordan, which Yale sponsored jointly with the British School of Archaeology at Jerusalem from 1928–1934. Also founded during the Hellenistic period, Gerasa (also Jerash, Jarash) is located approximately 48 km north of Amman, Jordan. During the Roman period, Gerasa was transformed by the construction of an urban grid, which paved the way for colonnaded streets and monumental architecture, whether temples, theaters, and open public spaces. Under Byzantine rule, many Christian churches, and even a Jewish synagogue, were built throughout the city, often adorned with mosaic decoration. The Gerasa archive at the Art Gallery contains photographic documentation of these architectural remains, mosaics, and other finds, as well as plans and drawings from the excavation itself.
The Yale University Art Gallery opened to the public in 1832. At the time, its collections consisted of a small initial donation of paintings and miniature portraits made by John Trumbull, a history painter and portraitist. Since then, the Art Gallery's permanent collection has grown to include over 185,000 works, divided among ten curatorial departments: African Art, American Decorative Arts, American Paintings and Sculpture, Ancient Art, Art of the Ancient Americas, Asian Art, Coins and Medals, Early European Art, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. Previously dispersed in various locations throughout the university, Yale's art collections were first united in 1928, with the construction of the Gallery of Fine Art designed by architect Egerton Swartwout. The museum reopened in 1953 as the Yale University Art Gallery and Design Center, in a new building designed by architect Louis I. Kahn. Widely regarded as Kahn's first masterpiece, the Art Gallery was also Kahn's first major public commission. Kahn's modernist structure, constructed from brick, concrete, glass, and steel, stands in contrast to the neo–Gothic style that characterizes the rest of Yale's campus, including the nearby Swartwout building. A recent restoration and renovation campaign has restored the purity and integrity of Kahn's original design, which employed bold engineering innovations and geometric forms to create expansive spaces that play with light and shadow. The second floor of the renovated Art Gallery features a new permanent gallery devoted to the arts of Africa. Its centerpiece is the Charles B. Benenson collection, which is noted for its selection of ritual figures and masks from West and Central Africa. The 500+ objects in 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.
Collection information
| Total size of collection* | 36,800 |
|---|---|
| Percentage of completion | 0% |
* Image totals should be regarded as an approximation until a given collection is 100% complete. Users should also bear in mind that the number of images available to them may vary from country to country, reflecting ARTstor’s approach to addressing an international copyright landscape that itself varies from country to country.
Last updated: December 13, 2007