Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

For the past nine months, the Yale Center for British Art has been closed to the public for a building conservation project, which aims to include more sustainable and climate-conscious design choices within the museum.

The conservation project, slated to finish before the museum’s reopening in 2025, includes replacing the roof of the museum and its 224 skylights, according to Building and Preservation Manager Dana Greenidge. These skylights were a standout feature of the original architecture and were famously dubbed by building architect Louis I. Kahn as the “building’s fifth elevation.” 

Nonetheless, Greenidge wrote to the News that the current project is an opportunity to “take advantage of the many advances in technology since the 1970’s, including materials that are more durable and environmentally sustainable than their predecessors.”

In addition to these replacements, the museum will be transitioning its entire lighting system, which uses halogen lights, to LED lighting with financial support from the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative, or FCI. 

Founded by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in 2021, the FCI supports clean energy use for the visual arts.

“FCI was established by the Foundation in association with RMI and Environment & Culture Partners in 2021, and it is the largest private national grant-making program to address climate change action through cultural institutions,” the Foundation wrote in a statement to the News.

In 2022, the YCBA and the Yale University Art Gallery each received $100,000 grants from the FCI to undergo an LED lighting conversion project. 

To date, the FCI has garnered over $10 million in funding to support 175 energy efficiency and clean energy projects at 147 institutions across 34 states, according to spokesperson Shea Sherry of the initiative. According to Sherry, clean energy projects such as that of the YCBA speak to a “trend” of accountability for museums to have climate-friendly infrastructure — which not only includes the efforts of the FCI, but also an international Gallery Climate Coalition that aims to reduce the art sector’s carbon emissions by a minimum of 50 percent by 2030. 

To ensure that these new climate design choices preserve the aesthetics of the museum, the YCBA consulted with Yale-affiliated faculty and greater industry experts, such as School of Architecture Dean Deborah Berke. For Greenidge, the conservation project is an infrastructure upgrade that must be approached “holistically” because of the cultural and historical significance of the Louis I. Kahn building. 

Khan was a modernist architect known for designing massive, heavy buildings. The architecture of the YCBA is renowned for combining these characteristics with a simplistic interior that, during the daytime, is illuminated without artificial light. The building was the architect’s final project and was completed two years after his death in 1974.

“One of our priorities is to select high functioning materials and products while also preserving the essence of Kahn’s aesthetic vision for the building,” Greenidge wrote to the News. 

In light of the museum’s closure, the YCBA has introduced online and in-person events, off-site exhibitions and art loans to continue engagement with the Yale and Greater New Haven communities, and also to reach a broader international audience. 

Throughout closure, the YCBA continued its online Artists in Conversation series and has also offered in-person events in collaboration with other campus institutions. In September, the YCBA co-presented a concert with Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae, celebrating her fourth studio album “Black Rainbows.” In November, the museum held the annual Norma Lytton Lecture featuring former president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daniel Weiss Yale MPPM ’85. 

In addition, over 60 works from the YCBA’s collection have been moved to the YUAG as a part of a special exhibition titled “In A New Light: paintings from the Yale Center for British Art.” Since March, the exhibition, running until Dec. 3, has featured works by John Constable, Gwen John, Angelica Kauffman, George Stubbs and J. M. W. Turner. 

According to YCBA Deputy Director and Chief Curator Martina Droth, the museum’s education department coordinated weekly tours of the exhibition with YCBA docents and student guides, and after the exhibition’s conclusion, some paintings will remain on view at the Gallery into the new year. 

The YCBA has also loaned its works to national and international institutions in order to preserve audience engagement and reception of the museum’s collection. Over the summer, drawings and paintings by William Blake, John Linnell and Samuel Palmer were included in a solo exhibition at SITE Santa Fe. The museum has also lent works to the Baltimore Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Jewish Museum in New York. In addition, Sir Reynold’s painting, “Mrs. Abington as Miss Prue, in ‘Love for Love’ by William Congreve,” was spotlighted in an exhibition titled “Crown to Couture” at the Kensington Palace in London.

In preparation for the museum’s reopening in 2025, the YCBA is working on two special exhibitions that will accompany their collection reimagined by the conservation project’s renovations. The special exhibitions will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner’s birth and will present drawings and paintings by contemporary artist Tracey Emin. Citing the audience turnout of a symposium on J. M. W. Turner, hosted by the YCBA in September, the museum anticipates similar reception with their reopening exhibitions. 

“The phenomenal turnout is indicative of interest in and excitement about one of Britain’s most celebrated painters, who will be the subject of an exhibition at the YCBA in 2025,” YCBA Associate Director of Research Jemma Field wrote to the News. 

The YCBA will be making a formal announcement about the reopening in January 2024.

Correction, Nov. 30: A previous version of this article stated that the YCBA is set to reopen in 2024, but it is currently set to reopen in 2025. The article has been updated accordingly.

Correction, Dec. 6: A previous version of this article misspelled Dana Greenidge, Deborah Berke, William Blake, Louis Kahn. The article has been updated accordingly.