Yale Art Gallery

The Yale University Art Gallery, founded in 1832 when artist John Trumbull donated his Revolutionary War paintings to Yale, is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. Its earliest home—a Trumbull-designed gallery on Old Campus—was replaced over time by a complex of interconnected buildings, beginning with Street Hall in 1866 and the eclectic Swartwout Building in 1928. The museum’s most celebrated addition arrived in 1953 with Louis Kahn’s pioneering modernist structure, whose tetrahedral concrete ceiling became an icon of 20th-century architecture. A major renovation and expansion completed in 2012 unified the historic and modern wings, creating nearly 70,000 square feet of exhibition space. Today the gallery houses more than 300,000 works spanning ancient to contemporary art and remains one of the University’s most significant cultural institutions.