Yale Center For British Art Reopening In New Haven, Connecticut

The British (artworks) are coming (back)!

The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT reopens March 29, 2025, following two years of conservation construction, again welcoming the public–for free–to enjoy the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. Renovations to replace the iconic 1977 Louis I. Kahn designed modernist museum’s roof, skylights, and lighting systems help safeguard both the building and its artworks.

Inside, a full reinstallation of the permanent collection unites the YCBA’s historic and contemporary pieces in an uninterrupted chronological sequence. Curators took care in following the lead of where the artworks took them.

“(Previously) we tried to use paintings to tell stories, whereas now, we’re letting the paintings tell the story, a slight reversal of emphasis,” Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director at the Yale Center for British Art, told Forbes.com.

The YCBA’s core collection and landmark building were a gift to Yale University from the collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929).

What stories are the paintings telling? A “challenging” story in Droth’s words.

Visitors will find more than arcadian Constable landscapes and genteel Gainsborough portraits of aristocrats.

“The history of the British Empire, obviously, involved Britain spreading its footprint, moving into other countries, colonizing other countries, and exploiting other places,” Droth said. “An example of a painting that tells that story is an early depiction of the island of Barbados that shows the island having been colonized by the British and having been turned into a sugar colony through the production of slave labor, and you can see it in the painting. So when I say challenging, it’s to acknowledge that a lot of the art that was made over five centuries tell the story of all aspects of what Britain was about, politically, globally, economically.”

Global is another point of emphasis. Britain was and is an empire once so vast it was famously said the sun never set on it. “British art” was created by artists born in Britain who left to work in Europe and around the world as well as by artists from Europe and around the world who came to work in Britain. Almost half the works on view were made by artists not born in Britain or artists who left Britain to make their careers elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of movement that is simply part of the history of British art and part of the collection that we have; it’s inherently an international story rather than an island story,” Droth said.

The new installation places iconic works such as John Constable’s paintings of rural England alongside never-before exhibited works from the founding collection, such as William Daniell’s newly conserved A View in China: Cultivating the Tea Plant (ca. 1810). Other highlights include classic treasures by George Stubbs and Thomas Gainsborough alongside bold works by contemporary artists such as Cecily Brown, bridging centuries through shared themes and formal explorations.

New acquisitions also allow the Center to show the vital role that women played in the history of British art, with major works by Mary Beale, Maria Spilsbury, and Emma Soyer.

J. M. W. Turner

Born 250 years ago this year, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was one of the most virtuosic and complex artists of the 19th century. Many consider him the greatest British artist ever. Many go further than that, calling him the forbearer of Impressionism and nothing less than the father of Modern art. The YCBA reopens with a special exhibition, “J. M. W. Turner: Romance and Reality,” (through July 27, 2025) the first show there focusing on Turner in more than 30 years.

“We have an amazing Turner collection. We don’t just have a handful of paintings by Turner, we have almost 3,000 works by Turner including works on paper and prints and drawings and sketchbooks,” Droth said. “We can trace his whole career through our collection. He started with careful topographical drawings. He trained in how to draw architecture and ruins and classical landscapes. Then you can see him developing his style and becoming very interested in the quality of light and the sky. You can see his style evolve.”

The one-time child prodigy’s style evolved over a 60-year career into the revolutionary landscape paintings for which those “father of Impressionism” and “first Modern artist” plaudits were applied.

“By the time you get to the end (of his life), some of the paintings that he made almost dissolve into close to abstraction,” Droth explained. “Interestingly, they still show place, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it, because it’s become so ethereal and so much about the atmosphere of water and sky and clouds.”

“Romance and Reality” features the YCBA’s most iconic Turner oil paintings alongside outstanding watercolors and prints, and the artist’s only complete sketchbook outside of the British Isles. Together they reveal his astounding technical skill and the powerful combination of profound idealism with his acute awareness of the tragic realities of human life.

Tracey Emin

Reopening the Center with Turner was an obvious choice. A companion solo exhibition for Tracey Emin (b. 1963), perhaps less so. Not to Droth.

“As the Yale Center for British Art, we’re very conscious that we are a center of the whole story of British art,” she said. “Some people might be familiar with Turner, and some people might be familiar more with contemporary art. We tell the whole story, and we can put an artist like Tracey Emin into a historical context. Tracey Emin is one of the foremost artists working in Britain today. She has never had a solo museum exhibition in the United States.”

That fact is astonishing considering Emin’s been a leading transatlantic voice in contemporary art since the 1990s.

Many of the paintings on view in the show have never been shown in a museum anywhere.

“A lot of people have heard of Tracey Emin, but you rarely see her work in museums,” Droth said. “You might see a neon, or you might see one of her applique blanket works, but you never see her work in quantity and her paintings have been overlooked. Our mission is to be a place that introduces this culture into North America.”

Emin explores deeply personal experiences confronting timely issues about female sexuality and women’s bodies. Her paintings lay bare intimate and private experiences that veer from the prosaic to the most profound and life-affirming aspects of being a woman.

Through her raw portrayal of the female form, Emin challenges traditional depictions of women in art, centering instead on the authenticity of lived experience. In layman’s terms, she keeps it real.

Emin’s paintings may initially strike visitors as provocative.

“I find her paintings less and less provocative and more and more, not about provoking, but about processing an experience,” Droth said. “She offers us a way of thinking about how we process emotions from ordinary things that happen–from love, from grief, from feeling abandoned–all those things that happen to each of us, that we process internally. I find her paintings are her way of externalizing that and creating these universal things.”

Droth hopes people take the time with Emin’s work to move past first impressions.

“I’m drawn in by paintings you can read in multiple ways, paintings that evoke feelings and emotions; you’re trying to work out what you’re looking at. I’m hoping this will happen when people go to the show, they take time,” she said. “The more time you spend with (Emin’s paintings), the more they give you.”

Emin and Turner do have more in common than their nationality and profession. Both were shaped by time spent in the coastal town of Margate. Turner had a fascination with the sea bordering on fetish. The sketchbook on view in “Romance and Reality,” his 1845 “Channel Sketchbook,” was used on the artist’s last journey across the English Channel and contains views of the coastline around Margate where he spent much time during his childhood and old age.

Emin was raised and continues spending part of each year in Margate.

“The way Tracey described it, Turner and her shared this history in Margate where they spent significant parts of their career. She said, ‘I’m looking at a sunset; Turner looked at the same sunset. We looked at the same ocean over this long period of time,’” Droth explained. “She wants to see herself as coming out of a British tradition of art making, and painting in particular. I don’t want to overplay the connection between them, but again, it’s about saying that there is a history of British art here over the centuries and Turner and Emin exemplify those two ends of the spectrum.”

“Tracey Emin: I Loved You Until The Morning” can be seen through August 10, 2025.

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