Dionna Thomas '06 sings a solo at an art gallery open house. Backing her up are Sarah Graham '07, Rachel Saltzman '08, and Whitney Seibel '06.

The Arts

Yale University Art Gallery program helps students connect through firsthand encounters with art

When Damaris Yeh Nou came to Yale as an undergraduate biology student in 2001, she walked into the Freshman Activities Bazaar, headed right for the Yale University Art Gallery table and signed up as a volunteer.

Her work at the Gallery became the perfect counterpoint to her work in the lab, she says.

“It helped me step outside of myself in terms of my work in biology,” says Nou. “It taught me about the importance of being a participant in the community. It allowed me to connect with people, taught me how to communicate with them and allowed me to find common ground with people who were different from me." She says she is looking forward to exploring the art world in Baltimore, where she just started as a medical student at Johns Hopkins University.

And that, exactly, is the point, says Pamela Franks, Curator of Academic Initiatives at the Gallery.

“Getting students so deeply involved with the Gallery creates a kind of commitment and a habit of being involved with museums. Some of them will stay involved with the Yale Art Gallery and some will move and stay involved wherever they land. Whether they become writers, teachers, doctors or lawyers, they will find that art absolutely is relevant to their own lives and to the lives of people in the communities where they live,” says Franks.

Gallery develops multi-pronged strategy

Academic initiatives at Yale University Art Gallery are designed to meet four major goals: ensuring that objects from the Gallery are used in Yale courses offered by a wide variety of departments across the university; developing extracurricular programs for interested students from all majors; developing initiatives that allow Yale students to teach adult audiences and school groups in New Haven; and making sure that students are involved in every aspect of museum operations, from developing exhibits to working in the business office.

Franks says one of her goals is to make sure that students and faculty alike have access to the art resources they need. “This is absolutely a teaching museum,” she said. “All of the Gallery’s curators are completely dedicated to working with faculty and students, in their area of study.”

The programs run by Franks have gained momentum over the years and now attract applicants from a wide range of disciplines. While she doesn’t necessarily look for expertise in art when selecting interns and other program participants, she does want her students to be passionate about art. “We are looking for people who are genuinely committed to communicating and sharing. So much of it is teaching based. What we teach them, they teach others. And, they learn as much by teaching as they do by being taught.”

In-depth studies and just plain fun

She cites several recent initiatives where the resources of the museum have been used to give students firsthand experience with art. Last year, Yale Professor Edward S. Cooke, Jr. taught a freshman seminar on American decorative arts in the Gallery's Furniture Study. “This was complete immersion – the students were literally surrounded by the history they were studying. They would discuss a coffee table while sitting on the floor and looking at it," she said.

Cooke's class was one of about twenty at Yale that used original works of art from the museum as part of the curriculum. Classes from American Studies, History, English, Humanities, Music History and various foreign language departments used the Gallery's resources. For example, every student enrolled in beginning and intermediate Italian picked a work of art on view at the Gallery and gave a presentation on it, in Italian. Franks works with the other museums and libraries on campus to make sure that students have access to those collections as well.

This year, Franks is helping a group of students organize an exhibition of contemporary sculpture that will be on view when the Louis Kahn building opens in December 2006. The exhibit will explore connections between art and architecture.

Some of the Gallery’s programs for students are just plain fun. An open house at the Gallery in September was attended by more than 700 people who got to vote for their favorite Yale singing group among the many that performed that night.

Developing patience and curiosity through studying art

Alice Lorch, who worked as a Gallery Guide while studying biology at Yale, distinctly remembers her amazement while looking at stones that were thousands of years old from the Babylonian collection. She saw paintings being restored and was able to request works of art out of storage, if she wanted to see them. She eventually developed a tour, later adapted to an online presentation, called “Humanity in Art.”

“I wanted to illuminate the human side of each work—whether a portrait, Pollock’s splatters, or Rothko’s solid canvas. I wanted to show ordinary people how they could experience art without any training, that they already had the tools simply by being part of the human experience,” she says. “So many people, even Yale students, think that they can’t walk around an art gallery because they don’t know what to look for.”

The Art Gallery became one of her favorite places when she was at Yale. She would sit for hours in front of a painting, not moving, until she felt like she really knew the painting. She says that helped her develop an eye for observation and detail that helps her in her studies. “That same patience and curiosity are essential in medicine,” she says.

While applying to Harvard Medical School, Lorch wrote her entrance essay about her work at Yale University Art Gallery. Now in her second year at Harvard and back in the Boston area after having spent the past summer working in Guatemala, Lorch is volunteering at the Museum of Fine Arts. “I now give tours on a volunteer basis, and this year, I am planning to give a monthly session in the galleries to a class from a local high school for troubled students. The MFA has been really welcoming and it has been a great way to continue being around art since I am otherwise drowning in science!”