Teaching with Slides: The History of the Visual Resources Collection at Yale

Bob Thompson

Professor Robert Thompson, Yale University (1960s) 

Born in Brownsville TX, Thompson earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale. Although it can be hard to believe now, he was one of the first academics to teach the influence of African culture on American culture. He shook up the world view of generations of undergraduates. In the VRC, he seemed like chaos. He used images that were in no Art History books at the time, either because they were of African and African-American culture, or because they were from the art being shown in galleries that were years from being collected in museums. 

In the VRC, he had sole use of a large file cabinet stuffed with mounted photographs. They were of artworks, musicians, dance rituals, village gatherings, many of them photos he'd taken himself. He would spread them over long tables in the photo room, exclaiming with pleasure as he created what seemed like miscellaneous piles of images. Somehow, he would transform this into lectures. 

The VRC's first mission was to serve the teaching needs of the faculty, and if that meant providing a file cabinet that would never be organized or useable by other faculty, so be it.