Restoration underway …

Art Business News, July, 2004

Restoration underway ... The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., the oldest college art museum in the Western Hemisphere, has begun the comprehensive restoration of its landmark main building, designed by American architect Louis I. Kahn. Opened in 1953, the gallery was Kahn's first significant commission and is widely considered to be his first masterpiece.

It houses works from the gallery's international collections, as well as temporary exhibitions. While the Louis Kahn building is dosed, the Yale Art Gallery will continue to display its collections of American paintings, sculpture and decorative arts in the gallery's Gothic-style wing, designed in 1928 by Egerton Swartwout. The Kahn building reopens in spring 2006. Restoration of the Swartwout building is scheduled to begin in 2008. The art gallery restoration has been designed by James Polshek, Richard Olcott, and Duncan Hazard of the New York City-based Polshek Partnership. The work is part of the university's master plan for the Yale Arts Area, for which Duncan Hazard is also the lead architectural planner.