Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Bezoekersgids & wat te doen in de buurt

The Yale University Art Gallery is the art museum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. Founded in 1832, it holds hundreds of thousands of objects from ancient Egypt to contemporary art, and its buildings are a lesson in American architecture in their own right.

The story behind it

The gallery began in 1832, when the painter and Revolutionary War veteran John Trumbull gave Yale a group of his paintings of scenes from the American Revolution. Yale built a home for them, and the collection grew steadily through gifts from alumni and others over the following two centuries.

Today the gallery spans several connected buildings. The Gothic Revival building from the late 1920s sits beside Street Hall, a Victorian structure, and the modernist Louis Kahn building from 1953 joins them. The Kahn building was the first major museum commission of one of the twentieth century's great architects. After a long renovation, the complex reopened to the public in 2012.

What to look for

• Look at the Chapel Street side of the Kahn building, where a largely windowless wall of brick and glass gives little away about the galleries behind it.
• Inside, look up at the concrete ceiling, built from a geometric grid of triangular forms that Kahn used to carry services and light.
• Find the cylindrical stairwell, a plain concrete drum that shows how Kahn shaped space with simple geometry.
• Seek out the Vincent van Gogh painting The Night Cafe, one of the best-known works in the collection.

Tips for your visit

• Allow one to two hours for a good look at the highlights, longer if you want to read your way through the ancient and European galleries.
• Check current opening hours and any special exhibition details before you go.
• The Yale Center for British Art, another Louis Kahn building, stands directly across Chapel Street, so the two make an easy pair.
• The gallery is close to the Yale campus and the New Haven Green, so it fits naturally into a longer walk through the centre of the city.

See it on a quest

The gallery is one stop on Murder Mystery: Death in the Shadows in New Haven, a self-guided walk with a mystery theme. You reach the building on foot as part of a longer route through the streets around it, the app tells you about each place as you arrive, and you solve a puzzle using what is in front of you. It is a good way to look closely at the facade and its surroundings instead of just passing by. You can start whenever you like, with no guide and no group to join, and one ticket covers the whole group.