The mission of the Yale School of Art is to provide students with intellectually informed, hands-on instruction in the practice of an array of visual arts media within the context of a liberal arts university. As a part of the first institution of higher learning to successfully integrate a studio-based education into such a broad pedagogical framework, the Yale School of Art has a long and distinguished history of training artists of the highest caliber. A full-time faculty of working artists in conjunction with a diverse cross-section of accomplished visiting artists collaborate to design a program and foster an environment where the unique talents and perspectives of individual students can emerge and flourish.
The School of Art is founded on the belief that art is a fundamental force in national and international culture, and that one of the primary standards by which societies are judged is the quality, creative freedom, critical insight, and formal and technical innovation of the visual art they produce. The Yale School of Art teaches at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and consequently the student body consists of those whose primary or exclusive focus is art as well as those for whom art is an essential part of a varied course of inquiry. The school currently offers degrees and undergraduate majors in the areas of graphic design, painting/printmaking, photography, and sculpture.
Diversity
As a leading graduate institution of contemporary art and design, The Yale School of Art recognizes its responsibility, privilege, and opportunity to contribute to culture and creativity in society at large. The School commits to uphold principles of anti-racism, equity, diversity, and inclusion as integral to its mission, and will work towards achieving an educational environment that rejects inequity, advances social justice, and amplifies historically underrepresented voices.
The current enrolled School of Art population identifies as 62% students of color, the highest percentage among Yale’s professional schools. 18.25% identify as gender non-binary, non-confirming, or transgender, and the international student population is 29%. We aim to realize a vibrant, equitable, and sustainable future for our School that assures accountability to our espoused values and principles of belonging for all students, faculty, staff, and alumni. This mission-critical unit plan requires Yale to confront violent histories upon which our institution continues to benefit.
History
The study of the visual arts at Yale had its beginning with the opening, in 1832, of the Trumbull Gallery, one of the first (and long the only one) connected with a college in this country. It 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. A singularly successful art exhibition held in 1858 under the direction of the College Librarian, Daniel Coit Gilman, led to the establishment of an art school in 1864, through the generosity of Augustus Russell Street, a native of New Haven and graduate of Yale’s Class of 1812. This new educational program was placed in the hands of an art council, one of whose members was the painter-inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, a graduate of Yale College. American painter John Ferguson Weir served as the first director and then dean of the Yale School of the Fine Arts when it opened in 1869. It was the first art school connected with an institution of higher learning in the country, and classes in drawing, painting, sculpture, and art history were inaugurated. The art collections in the old Trumbull Gallery were moved into a building endowed by Augustus Street and so named Street Hall, and were greatly augmented by the acquisition of the Jarves Collection of early Italian paintings in 1871.
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. In 1928 a new art gallery was opened, built by Egerton Swartwout and funded through the generosity of Edward S. Harkness. It was connected to Street Hall by a bridge above High Street, and Street Hall was used for instruction in art. The program in architecture was moved to Weir Hall, designed by George Douglas Miller. A large addition to the Art Gallery, designed by Louis I. Kahn in collaboration with Douglas Orr, and funded by the family of James Alexander Campbell and other friends of the arts at Yale, was opened in 1953. Several floors were used by the School until the rapidly expanding Gallery collections required their use. In 1959 the School of Art and Architecture was made a fully graduate professional school. In 1963 the Art and Architecture Building, designed by Paul Rudolph, was opened, funded by many friends of the arts at Yale under the chairmanship of Ward Cheney. In 1969 the School was constituted as two faculties, each with its own dean; and in 1972 two separate schools were established by the President and Fellows, the School of Art and the School of Architecture, which until 2000 shared the Rudolph building (now Rudolph Hall) for most of their activities. Sculpture was housed at 14 Mansfield Street in Hammond Hall (a large building formerly used for mechanical engineering), graphic design was located at 212 York Street (an old Yale fraternity building), and at 215 Park Street there were classrooms and additional graduate painting studios. Street Hall was assigned to the University Department of the History of Art. The arts at Yale—architecture, art, the Art Gallery, the Center for British Art, the history of art, the School of Drama, and the Repertory Theatre—thus occupied a group of buildings stretching along and near Chapel Street for almost three blocks.
