Yale School of Art - History

History

The study of the visual arts at Yale began with the opening of the Trumbull Gallery in 1832. The Gallery was founded by patriot-artist Colonel John Trumbull, one-time aide-de-camp to General Washington, with the help of Professor Benjamin Silliman, the celebrated scientist.

Augustus Russell Street donated funds for the establishment of an art school in 1864. The program was placed under an art council, one of whose members was the painter-inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, a graduate of Yale College. Yale alumnus Andrew Dickson White was petitioned by the school's faculty to become the first dean, but instead opted to be the first president of Cornell University. When the School opened in 1869, it was the first of its kind affiliated with a tertiary institution in America. Classes in drawing, painting, sculpture, and art history were inaugurated.

Architectural instruction was begun in 1908 and was established as a department in 1916 with Everett Victor Meeks at its head. Drama, under the direction of George Pierce Baker and with its own separate building, was added in 1925 and continued to function as a department of the School until it became an independent school in 1955.

The department of graphic design (initially called graphic arts) was begun in 1951 under the direction of Alvin Eisenman. It was the first graduate program in graphic design in the United States.

In 1959 the School of Art and Architecture was made a fully graduate professional school. Four years later the Art and Architecture Building was opened to much controversy. Designed by Paul Rudolph, it falls under the category of brutalism in modernist architecture.

In 1972 two separate schools, the School of Art and the School of Architecture, were established. They continued to share the Art and Architecture building until 2000. In 2000, the art school opened a new building at 1156 Chapel Street, near the Rudolph building. It is called Green Hall and houses BFA and MFA students in photography and graphic design. The painting MFAs have their own building behind Green Hall; sculpture MFAs, who used to be in Hammond Hall across campus (since demolished), are now in a new sculpture building at 36 Edgewood, designed by Kiernan Timberlake and Associates.