The Yale Center for British Art, an iconic modern building in New Haven, Connecticut, designed by the American architect Louis I. Kahn to house Paul Mellon’s extraordinary gift to Yale University, reopens to the public on May 11, 2016, after completing the third phase of a multi-year building conservation project.

Led by Knight Architecture, LLC, this was the most complex building conservation work undertaken at the Center to date, comprising the entire structure, from roof to basement. It renews the Center’s public galleries, internal systems, spaces, and amenities, and has provided an opportunity to reimagine and reinstall the Center’s renowned collections of more than five centuries of British art—the largest outside of the United Kingdom.

After more than a decade of research on the history of the design and construction of Kahn’s final building, the reopening of the Center marks the completion of a three-phase renovation plan, during which the Center was closed to the public. 

More than five hundred works from the Center’s holdings, largely the gift of the institution’s founder, Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929), will be displayed in the newly renovated and reconfigured galleries on the second and fourth floors.

“The reinstallation puts British art in a global context, tracing the relationship between art and Britain’s imperial ambitions from the sixteenth century to the present day,” said Matthew Hargraves, Chief Curator of Art Collections and Head of Collections Information and Access. “Far from being insular, the new hang shows the range and depth of British art, how much it was shaped by artists from across the globe, and how it was constantly being reinvented in response to Britain’s changing fortunes. Above all, it seeks to show how British art defined a nation that shaped the modern world.”

Developed by a team of curators led by Scott Wilcox, the Center’s Deputy Director for Collections, and Hargraves, this new installation presents the complex story of the development of British art from the time of the Protestant Reformation to the present.

“Ours is one of the most outstanding institutions devoted to the art and culture of a single nation,” said Director Amy Meyers. “The challenge that we embrace enthusiastically is to understand, celebrate, interrogate, and critique that culture in a global context.”