On June 3, 2022, I went and visited the Yale Center for British Art on my own as a self-care day. It was a beautiful day out, so I parked a bit further away from the museums so I could walk and enjoy the scenery of Downtown New Haven. Everyone at both museums I visited that day were lovely people and incredibly helpful explaining which parts of the museum had what exhibits, and where they recommended starting. For the Yale Center for British Art, the woman at the main desk gave me a program with the names of the artists’ and their exhibits that were on display, and the one that stuck out to me most was Bridget Riley. I started on the second floor, the color section of her exhibit, and worked my way to the third, the black and white section of her exhibit. Admiring each one of her very unique and individual pieces, reading about her and her life along the way, and watching how people interacted with the paintings was really cool to watch.
The Yale Center for British Art, opened in 1977, was founded by Paul Mellon who graduated from Yale University in 1929. This museum is the largest museum devoted to British art outside of the United Kingdom. Alongside the huge collection, the building itself was the last design done by architect Louis I. Kahn. The museum has a ginormous amount of art, garnering over 2,000 paintings, 250 sculptures, 20,000 drawings / watercolors, 40,000 prints, and 35,000 rare books / manuscripts. The collection has works from the likes of John Constable, George Stubbs, and J. M. W. Turner. The Yale Center for British Art offers a continuous year-round collection of exhibitions, including academic resources such as reference library, study room, and online catalogs of the collections themselves. One part of the history of the Yale Center for British Art that I found really notable is that the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art institution in London awards fellowships and sponsors a credit-granting study abroad program for Yale in London. The building itself is also “Green Workplace Certified” by Yale University’s Office of Sustainability, with a statistic that over 85% of all disposable paper products have been replaced with earth-friendly alternatives.
My favorite piece within the Yale Center for British Art that is currently on display is “Exposure” done by Bridget Riley in 1966, under the medium of synthetic emulsion on canvas. This piece is within her exhibit “Bridget Riley: Perceptual Abstraction”. The piece mesmerized me the second I saw it, due to the sheer size of it as well as the optical illusion it gave me. Throughout my visit at the Yale Center for British Art, I continually kept walking back towards this piece, finding that each time I looked at it, the lines were going different directions. I think that paintings that make me think and stare at them for long periods of time are the best types of paintings.
Riley was born in 1931 and has had a career that has so far lasted over seven decades. She uses color, lines, and geometric patterns to explore the nature of visual perceptions across different mediums. This exhibit now displays the largest survey of Riley’s work within the United States in the last twenty years. Riley’s color collection was started in 1967 with the first color piece being shown in 1968. In that same year she became the first Briton and woman to win the international painting prize. Her piece “Exposure” is part of her monochromatic collection, during the time period of when Riley exclusively worked in black and white. Riley was first brought to the attention of international viewers because of her painting “Current” (1964). This painting was included in The Responsive Eye exhibition at MoMA.
Overall, my experience at the Yale Center for British Art was immensely positive and left me wanting to go back with friends, my partner, and even my parents so that they could experience the joy I felt walking through the museum as a whole, but particularly through Riley’s exhibits. Everyone who I interacted with was kind, knowledgeable, and respectful of both the viewers and the art itself. As someone who is half British but doesn’t know much about her culture / where she came from because of being adopted, I felt a sense of connection to my biological family being at the museum. I am looking forward to returning and spending more time there and getting to know each of the exhibits more in depth.
Information about the Yale Center for British Art
Great start to the class.... I appreciated the personal narrative... how you experienced the visit and the emotional connection you felt to being in a British safe space. An important part of the paper is to identify what or who influenced the artist, what movement, and how her work defined a new movement. What was it? A great place to begin research is of course Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridget_Riley I may be the first and only teacher you have had that encourages students to use Wikipedia. :)
ReplyDeleteAnother item to include are the actual dimensions of the work you are focusing on. All in all, nicely done. Your photos were well done too....