Cultural and Social Resources

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The Yale Peabody Museum, founded in 1866, houses more than fourteen million specimens and objects in ten curatorial divisions: Anthropology, Botany, Entomology, History of Science and Technology, Invertebrate Paleontology, Invertebrate Zoology, Mineralogy and Meteoritics, Paleobotany, Vertebrate Paleontology, and Vertebrate Zoology. The renowned collections continue to enrich teaching and learning and to inform groundbreaking new research. The museum’s galleries are currently under renovation and will reopen in 2024 to display thousands of objects, including the first Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Triceratops specimens ever discovered.

The Yale University Art Gallery was founded in 1832 as an art museum for Yale and the community. Today it is one of the largest museums in the country, holding nearly 300,000 objects and welcoming visitors from around the world. The museum’s encyclopedic collection can engage every interest. Galleries showcase artworks from ancient times to the present, including vessels from Tang-dynasty China, early Italian paintings, textiles from Borneo, treasures of American art, masks from Western Africa, modern and contemporary art, ancient sculptures, masterworks by Degas, van Gogh, and Picasso, and more. Spanning one and a half city blocks, the museum features more than 4,000 works on display, multiple classrooms, a rooftop terrace, a sculpture garden, and dramatic views of New Haven and the Yale campus. The gallery’s mission is to encourage an understanding of art and its role in society through direct engagement with original works of art. Programs include exhibition tours, lectures, and performances, all free and open to the public. For more information, please visit https://artgallery.yale.edu.

The Yale Center for British Art is a museum that houses the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom, encompassing works in a range of media from the fifteenth century to the present. It offers a vibrant program of exhibitions and events both in person and online. Opened to the public in 1977, the YCBA’s core collection and landmark building—designed by architect Louis I. Kahn—were a gift to Yale University from the collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon, ’29. For more information, visit https://britishart.yale.edu.

There are more than eighty endowed lecture series held at Yale each year on subjects ranging from anatomy to theology, and including virtually all disciplines.

More than five hundred musical events take place at the University during the academic year. In addition to degree recitals by graduate students, the School of Music presents the Ellington Jazz Series, Faculty Artist Series, Horowitz Piano Series, New Music New Haven, Oneppo Chamber Music Series, and Yale in New York, as well as performances by the Yale Opera, Yale Philharmonia, Yale Choral Artists, and various YSM ensembles, along with concerts at the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments. The Institute of Sacred Music presents Great Organ Music at Yale, the Yale Camerata, the Yale Schola Cantorum, and many other special events. The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music presents a six-week Chamber Music Session, along with the New Music Workshop and the Chamber Choir and Choral Conducting Workshop. Many of these concerts stream live on the School’s website (https://music.yale.edu). Undergraduate organizations include the Yale Bands, Yale Glee Club, Yale Symphony Orchestra, and numerous other singing and instrumental groups. The Department of Music sponsors the Yale Collegium, Yale Baroque Opera Project, productions of new music and opera, and undergraduate recitals.

For theatergoers, Yale and New Haven offer a wide range of dramatic productions at such venues as the University Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale Cabaret, Yale Residential College Theaters, Off Broadway Theater, Iseman Theater, Whitney Humanities Center, Collective Consciousness Theatre, A Broken Umbrella Theatre, Elm Shakespeare Company, International Festival of Arts and Ideas, Long Wharf Theatre, and Shubert Performing Arts Center.