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

Vincent Scully

History of Art Professor Vincent Scully reviewing slides 

Professor Vincent Scully lecturing during class (1960s). 

A New Haven native born in 1920, Scully attending public school, was a scholarship student at Yale at the age of 16 and rose to become one of America's most influential teachers of the history of art and architecture. His lecture courses were held in the Law School auditorium because it was the largest lecture hall on campus, and it was always a full house. Even undergraduates who never thought they would be interested in art history were entranced by him. Every year, when he lectured about the destruction of Pennsylvania Station in New York, he was moved to tears. 

He prepared his lectures at one of the long tables in the slide room, combining 35mm slides with lantern slides (which needed a special viewer and projector), lining them up on the light table. They were not always the newest, cleanest slides that he chose. As Helen Chillman explained it, he saw through the image to the actual object, not even noticing the dust specks and faded colors. Not that he never noticed--he famously found one lantern slide so displeasing that he flung it against the wall, smashing it to bits. 

The VRC was a refuge for Prof. Scully. The pointer he used during lectures (remembered by all who saw him speak) was kept by Helen Chillman's desk. He would often sit at the staff lunch table, reading the Yale Daily News. When the annual April Fools edition came out, laced with obscenities and ribald jokes, he would howl with laughter, saying, "It's terribly sophomoric, but very funny!" 

He has been called "America's most important architecture historian" by the New York Times. Philip Johnson called him "the most influential architecture teacher ever." He was a voice against urban renewal when few people recognized the destruction it was causing in America's cities. He was the father of New Urbanism, a movement in which the lives of residents are taken into account when designing buildings.