Browse Exhibitions

This online exhibition is a celebration of the architectural history of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library and the key events and partners who contributed to the impact and evolution of this building and collection.

This exhibit celebrates 50 years of Women's Varsity Athletics at Yale through photographs, archival records, and audiovisual recordings.

As an aesthetic object, the lyric is paradoxical in scope. Unique and particular, lyric speaks in the first-person voice and it is deeply rooted in personal contexts; often difficult to translate, its nuances are sometimes near-impossible to grasp across deep cultural divides. And yet, at the same time, lyric also makes claims to the universal, speaking of timeless themes that defy historical contingencies as it seeks, repeatedly, to engage our most fundamental human feelings. This online exhibition, and Yale University Library Model Research Collection associated with it, explore a multifaceted understanding of the lyric—from the material cultures of lyric production and dissemination and its performance and transmission across different audiences, to its cultural functions and political impacts, its philosophic claims and ethical aspirations.

This online exhibition showcases examples of the natural history book as an active work of art shaped by different hands. Drawing primarily from the rich collections of the Medical Historical Library, it displays how elite collectors, interested laymen, artists, and naturalists alike colored and annotated their respective copies of natural history books and albums, how they hid, preserved, and pasted plant specimens in these books, and folded pages in them.

We are Everywhere explores the relationship between lesbians, archives, and lesbian objects in archives. Beginning in the archives of the Harlem Renaissance and ending in the archives of the AIDS crisis, this exhibition asks the question: What does it mean to catalog an object as “lesbian” –or to not? In particular, the exhibition highlights moments where lesbians deliberately introduce themselves into the mainstream historical record with younger generations in mind: creating their own archives so, as Lisbet Tellefsen said, young lesbians of the future “trying to organize and do work will have it a little easier.” The objects in this show are a small sample of the material traces left by our vast, continually discovered queer history. We are everywhere. We write, we love, we care, we see. We name ourselves.

This online exhibition explores William Hogarth’s engagement with topography, an important, if lesser-known aspect of his art. Topography is understood for this project in the broad definition provided in Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755): “Description of particular places.” Drawing primarily from the extensive collections of Hogarth’s graphic work at the Lewis Walpole Library and other Yale collections, Hogarth’s Topographies seeks to contribute to recent historiographic efforts that re-read Hogarth’s work in a more international perspective, most notably the “Hogarth and Europe” retrospective at Tate Britain (November 2022-March 2023), which stresses the necessity of approaching the artist’s work in the light of a broader European and global context that resonates in his production.

In 1966, Robert Brustein (DRA ’51), Dean of Yale School of Drama, founded Yale Repertory Theatre, a resident professional company that would serve as the equivalent of a “teaching hospital” for theater artists in training. From the beginning, the company has focused on championing new plays alongside productions of classic works.

Fifty years later, after winning a Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater and launching numerous world premieres that have gone on to Broadway and theaters around the world, Yale Rep continues to nurture and challenge daring artists, bold choices, and adventurous audiences.

This exhibition, originally installed in the Haas Arts Library from January 12-March 31, 2017, features production photographs from Manuscripts and Archives and archival materials from Arts Library Special Collections. It accompanied Yale Rep at 50: Daring Artists, Bold Choices, a selection of more than 70 production photographs spanning the company’s five-decade history, on view January 10-April 8, 2017 at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, as well as a smaller exhibition of the same name at the Study at Yale.

Credits
This exhibition was originally curated by Lindsay King (Associate Director for Access and Research Services, Haas Arts Library) and adapted into a digital exhibition by Andrew Wang (2017/18 Kress Fellow in Art Librarianship, Haas Arts Library).

Was Walpole really a ‘miser’, as William Hazlitt claimed? This exhibition uses images, manuscripts, artefacts and extracts from publications and correspondence to situate Walpole within the burgeoning philanthropic culture of his age. It will reveal Walpole’s secret giving to prisoners and other good causes and examine the principles which underlay his philanthropy. A main aim of the exhibition will be to stimulate discussion about philanthropy today. Walpole wrote that ‘if it ever is justifiable to good sense to act romantically, it is by being the knights errant of the distressed’. The exhibition will unravel contradictions in Walpole’s approach to philanthropy, illuminate the importance of charitable giving in the eighteenth century, and open up for the first time this most intimate, often hidden, aspect of Walpole’s life.

This exhibit explores the evolution of hip replacement surgery through historic implants selected from the new Keggi—Rubin Hip Implant Collection at Yale University. The displayed implants trace the trials, innovations, successes, and failures of hip replacement surgery over time, providing insight into the dynamic world of surgical history.

Beginning with pioneering work starting in the 1980s to the development of today’s quantum information processors, Yale University holds a leadership role in quantum. Interdisciplinary quantum research bridges disciplines and includes the departments of Physics, Applied Physics, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. This exhibit celebrates the University’s achievements in advancing our fundamental understanding of quantum science and engineering and turning quantum physics into practical technologies.