New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Museums a key part of New Haven 'cultural ecosystem'
DINOSAURS, ART, FAITH AND SCIENCE ABOUND
Editor’s note: This is the 35th story in the Register’s Top 50 series.
NEW HAVEN — It’s difficult to quantify just how many museums are in the Elm City on a given day because it’s always changing, if you consider “museum” a 20th century term, as does the man in charge of it all, Andrew Wolf, the city’s director of arts, culture and tourism.
Wolf, who said the goal is to make New Haven a “global destination for creativity,” said one must consider all the galleries, nonprofits and other spaces for art, ideas and objects. He said 82 nonprofit groups in New Haven specialize in arts and humanities.
“It’s always changing and it’s never the same,” he said of the museum status. “We’re a small city with big art.”
While many artistic gems are tucked around the city, the big ones stand out as being on many a “must-see” list among the 1.6 million to 1.8 million visitors per year.
“Museums are an important part of cultural ecosystems,” Wolf said.
The world-renowned Yale University Art Gallery sits at Chapel and York — architect Louis Kahn’s first “architectural masterpiece,” Wolf said, noting that across the street is Kahn’s last masterpiece before his death, Yale Center for British Art, the
largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom.
Wolf said he thinks of that as a “miracle.”
Wolf said the center isn’t called a museum because of the intellectual powers who visit to study from around the globe.
The building has no paint on it because Kahn wanted the artwork to be the only paint. Its gray, reflective panels are intended to “reflect the clouds and moods of the sun throughout the day,” Wolf said.
The museum was funded by Yale University graduate and philanthropist Paul Mellon, a collector of British art. In 1966, Mellon gave the building, works of art, and endowment that established the center. Mellon also attended Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford.
In the case of Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery, the oldest university art gallery in the United States, it’s one of the few museums in the country that doesn’t have glass facing the street in front. That was designed by Kahn so the sun would come in from the York Street side, which has glass, and from glass above.
The museum’s permanent collection features more than 4,000 works that include ancient times — vessels from the Tangdynasty China, textiles from Borneo — and masterworks by Degas, van Gogh and Picasso, to name just a few.
Even the big museums change the creative landscape with special exhibits: The Yale University Art Gallery features a landmark exhibit which, according to its website, “investigates a virtually unknown period in the career of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most famous artists of the Italian Renaissance.”
Just blocks away, at the Knights of Columbus Museum, is an award-winning exhibit, World War I: Beyond the Front Lines.
“To the extent New Haven itself is something of a living museum, home to iconic institutions, classic architecture, and history itself, I have a special appreciation for the numerous, world-class, traditional museums that call New Haven home,” Mayor Toni N. Harp said. “They preserve and showcase artwork, artifacts and treasures to help visitors stay reminded of the beauty in this world, its rich history, and the fact that New Haven has long been known as a special place that attracts exceptional people.”
Another world-renowned city treasure is the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, one of the oldest and largest university natural history museums in the world.
Museum Director David K. Skelly, in his welcome message on the museum website, says 150,000 people visit the museum each year, including schoolchildren, scholars and scientists.
Although many children in Greater New Haven know the museum on Whitney Avenue as “the dinosaur museum,” it is much more. Aside from dinosaurs, the museum explores birds, the history of human culture, gems and minerals, insects and plants, the wonders of the universe.
Skelly writes the museum houses “more than 13 million objects in 10 different divisions, representing more than four billion years of geological, biological and human history.”
The Great Hall of Dinosaurs is the centerpiece of the museum and features skeletons from the museum’s world-renowned paleontology collections, the website states. It is also home to Rudolph Zallinger’s famous mural, “The Age of Reptiles.”
“Opened in 1926, the Great Hall was designed to house some of the extensive fossils collected in the late 19th century for O.C. Marsh, among them the Peabody’s largest mounted skeleton, a Brontosaurus. Nearby are the reconstructed skeletons of Camarasaurus, Stegosaurus and Camptosaurus,” according to the website.
The New Haven Museum has a theme one would infer from the name: 375 years of city and surrounding history come to life, “From the colony’s founding as a puritan village through its growth into a major industrial center and now a thriving metropolitan area,” according to its website.
The New Haven Museum was founded in 1862 as the New Haven Colony Historical Society, and from the beginning sought to collect, preserve and make available for research materials that document the history of Greater New Haven.
The organization has always stressed scholarship.
One of the most significant exhibits housed in the museum is “The Amistad Gallery,” subtitled, “Cinque lives here.” Cinque was an African captive who served as leader of the Amistad slave ship rebellion in 1839.
He, along with 52 other men, who were simple rice farmers in their homeland of Sierra Leone, were abducted to be sold as slaves.
The exhibit tells the story of the Amistad affair and features a portrait of Cinque and the painting of the ship, a letter from John Quincy Adams to the captives, and items of that time. “The portrait of Cinque by New Haven painter Nathaniel Jocelyn is generally understood to be the first and one of the finest portrayals of an African in American art,” the museum website states.
The Knights of Columbus Museum at 1 State St. is housed in a building at the gateway to New Haven, visible from the highway, and designed by architect Kevin Roche.
The museum showcases the Catholic fraternal organization’s “history and achievements with its founding principles of charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism evident throughout the permanent galleries,” according to its website.
The lobby of the museum is said to provide “an impressive entryway to the museum,” according to the website.
It is the setting for a 400-yearold cross from atop St. Peter’s Basilica, a gift from Pope St. John Paul II in appreciation for the restoration of the basilica’s façade funded by the Knights of Columbus in the 1980s, the Knights of Columbus website states.
The Father Michael McGivney Gallery illustrates “McGivney’s vision for the role of laypeople in the Church and a fraternal society to unite men in faith and service resulted in the founding of the Knights of Columbus, which today is the largest Catholic lay organization in the world.”
The Papal Gallery recounts the longstanding relationship between the Knights of Columbus and the Vatican and the 170-foot-long Wall of History is a thematic and chronological presentation of the Knights of Columbus’ origins and development. Free-standing kiosks devoted to each of the supreme knights punctuate the timeline.
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library must be counted among the great museums in New Haven, Wolf said.
The library, according to its website, is “one of the world’s largest libraries devoted entirely to rare books and manuscripts and is Yale’s principal repository for literary archives, early manuscripts, and rare books.”
The library is home to the Gutenberg Bible and John James Audubon collection of works. Audubon, who was born in 1785 and died in 1851, was once the country’s dominant wildlife artist, and the man for whom the Audubon Society was named.
The striking building, of Vermont marble and granite, bronze and glass, was designed by Gordon Bunshaft. The marble panels filter light so that rare materials can be displayed without damage.
Wolf refers to art as “the creative sector,” and counts New Haven’s legendary pizza among that.
“People tell me there’s a wonderful new vibe in New Haven,” Wolf said. “There’s something every single day going on in New Haven. After 7 o’clock at night you still see people on the street enjoying life.”
He considers New Haven to be the “cultural hub of the state.”
“We work to bring the world to New Haven,” he said.
An informal Facebook survey showed many who live in the area take advantage of the museums in the city’s cultural ecosystem.
Sarah Walker Caron, formerly of Connecticut, wrote on Facebook: “I am a huge fan (of) the Yale Peabody — the dinosaurs are breathtaking but it’s the changing activities and interactive stations that make it so special.”
Some said they love the interactive Children’s Museum.
Arthur Bellucci, a musician and longtime music director, said he loves the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments. “Small, overlooked museum that contains a treasure trove of vintage instruments including strings, woodwinds, bells, and antique harpsichords. World-renowned artists are invited to perform here. The staff is quite knowledgeable and, like the best things in life, it’s free!”
Milford Alderman and activist Bryan Anderson said he likes the Peabody “for nostalgia,” but another is his adult favorite.
“Like other children, I was fascinated by dinosaur bones. I spent many a Saturday there, and would often walk from home. It’s especially a great place to visit on a rainy day when you can’t be outside for enjoyment. However, as an adult, New Haven Museum captures both New Haven’s important historical moments, and unique place in New England and America. I especially love the Amistad collection that should be shared with everyone! Letters written by former captives, abolitionists and the former President of the United States are in their collection,” Anderson wrote on Facebook.
Terri Miles wrote on Facebook that the Peabody is her favorite.
“So much to see for young and old. I can sit and look at the brontosaurus skeleton forever and wonder what it was like back then. (I refuse to call it apatosaurus) my granddaughter can’t get enough of the Egyptian exhibit,” Miles wrote.
Kathy Katella-Cofrancesco wrote on Facebook: “Yale Art Gallery and the British Museum — either/or, or both — well I think my favorite is British. It’s like a day trip to do once a year especially if there is something special like a concert as you walk in. The last time I went to British, we followed dancers though the galleries. The gift shop is awesome even if you don’t buy anything. Then you have to stop for coffee or something at some place like Atticus or Book Trader. I love that.”
Karen Rousseau has romantic and love of natural history reasons to love the Peabody.
She wrote on Facebook: “The Peabody because I was proposed to on the bench outside. And the two of us went there every year on field trips.”
Janet Hubon Stratton wrote on Facebook that Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is her favorite, “Hands down.”
“The building has thin marble panels that play with the light,” she wrote.
Sharon Porto chose the Peabody, as well, “because when I was young my father took us every year, and it was the first place I ever saw dinosaur bones.”
Janet Kipphut Ainsworth wrote of the Peabody: “Took my kids there so much, they could have given tours.