YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY

Yale’s rich collection of American paintings and sculpture offers a teaching resource unparalleled in any university museum; as a public museum collection it ranks among the nation’s top collections of American art. The collection has a long history, beginning in 1750, when Yale acquired its first American painting, a 1670 portrait of the Reverend John Davenport. In 1831, the patriot-artist John Trumbull gave more than one hundred of his portraits and historical paintings to Yale and designed a building to house them. Today, the Art Gallery’s American collection includes more than 2,500 paintings, 500 sculptures, and 300 miniatures, all created before the mid-twentieth century. Virtually every period in American history is represented through paintings by Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Frederick Remington, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, George Bellows, John Singer Sargent, Arthur Dove, and Edward Hopper, and sculptures by Hezekiah Augur, Hiram Powers, Horatio Greenough, William Henry Rinehart, Chauncey B. Ives, Alexander Archipenko, and Alexander Calder.

Over the years, gifts of major collections have enhanced the holdings significantly. In 1932, the Francis P. Garvan, B.A. 1897, family donated the Whitney Collections of Sporting Art, including over 1,000 paintings, prints, and sculptures. In 1941 Katherine S. Dreier, with Marcel Duchamp, established the Société Anonyme Collection, giving the Art Gallery paintings and sculpture by early twentieth-century masters (now held in the department of modern and contemporary art). A significant bequest, made in 1961 by Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903, brought some of the most distinguished and recognized paintings in American art to the Art Gallery, including works by Bellows, Copley, and Eakins, and in 1992 the collection was further enhanced through the gift of important landscapes and genre paintings from Teresa Heinz in memory of her husband, Senator H. John Heinz III, B.A. 1960.

		Helen A. Cooper helen.cooper@yale.edu Helen A. Cooper, the Holcombe T. Greene Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, received her Ph.D. from Yale in 1986. She oversees collections that range from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century and has organized major exhibitions on John Trumbull, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, and Eva Hesse. Among her current projects is leading the interdisciplinary traveling exhibition Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, to open in 2007. Download curriculum vitae

		Robin Jaffee Frank robin.jaffeefrank@yale.edu Robin Jaffee Frank, the Alice and Allan Kaplan Senior Associate Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, received her Ph.D. and M.A. in art history from Yale. Among her books are Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures (2000) and Charles Demuth Poster Portraits: 1923–1929 (1994). She organized the exhibitions Stagestruck in America (2004) and Justice on Trial: Ben Shahn's Case for Sacco and Vanzetti (2002). She has lectured and written extensively on American art. Download curriculum vitae

Cooper, Helen A., Patricia E. Kane, and Gerald W. R. Ward. Francis P. Garvan, Collector. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1980.

Cooper, Helen A., ed. John Trumbull: The Hand and Spirit of a Painter. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982.

Cooper, Helen A., ed. Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures. New Haven: Yale University Press; Yale University Art Gallery, 1996.

Curry, David Park. Winslow Homer: The Croquet Game. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1984.

Fillin-Yeh, Susan. Charles Sheeler: American Interiors. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1987.

Frank, Robin Jaffee. Charles Demuth Poster Portraits: 1923-1929. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1994.

Frank, Robin Jaffee. Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures. New Haven: Yale University Press; Yale University Art Gallery, 2000.

Freedman, Paula B., with the assistance of Robin Jaffee Frank. A Checklist of American Sculpture at Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992.

Foster, Kathleen, ed. Edwin Austin Abbey. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1973.

Amy Kurtz Lansing, American Miniatures of Children: 1770–1950, an Interpretive Guide to the Yale University Art Gallery's Collection. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 2005. Download PDF (file is 1.3MB)-->

Hawes, Peter. "A Great Panorama": Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of American Arts at Yale. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1998.

Montgomery, Charles F. and Patricia E. Kane, eds. American Art: 1750-1800, Towards Independence. Boston: Published for Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London by the New York Graphic Society, 1976.

Morgan, John Hill. Paintings by John Trumbull at Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926.

Prown, Jules David, et al. Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West. New Haven: Yale University Press; Yale University Art Gallery, 1992.

Simpson, Marc, Sally Mills, and Patricia Hills. Eastman Johnson: The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket. San Diego: Timken Art Gallery, 1990.

Sizer, Theodore, with the assistance of Caroline Rollins. The Works of Colonel John Trumbull, Artist of the American Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

Stebbins, Jr., Theodore E., and Galina Gorokhoff. A Checklist of American Paintings at Yale University. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982.