Isabella Sanchez, Contributing Photographer

On Friday, Haas Arts Library invited members of the Yale and New Haven community to take a closer look at the history and ongoing renovation of the Yale Center for British Art. The exhibit, “People Look Up at Good Architecture,” assembles various images, sketches and letters pertaining to the construction of YCBA, as well as its famed architect Louis Kahn. 

The exhibit commemorates the YCBA’s upcoming March reopening after it closed in 2023 for maintenance and renovation. Before walking through the exhibition, viewers heard from the architect supervising the reconstruction. 

“One of the things that I’ve always admired about this building is it has an extraordinary restraint and self-possession. And I think, really, that’s true of most of Kahn’s work,” said George Knight, supervising architect and a senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture. 

Dozens of people, from New Haven residents to School of Architecture students, joined Knight in anticipation for the re-opening of the YCBA. During his welcome speech, he spoke on three components of the YCBA building: the relationship between the city and the University, the connection between the “two Pennsylvanians” — Paul Mellon, the benefactor of the center, and Louis Kahn — and finally, the partnership between Yale and Kahn. 

Knight, using original materials from the exhibit, described his appreciation for Kahn’s work, before discussing the various innovative facets of its design. 

“So much of this was new and revelatory,” said Knight. “The relationships to the Yale leadership at the time, Kingman Brewster being president, Paul Mellon as patron, Jules Prowne as founding director … I think it sets up a much richer background for us all to appreciate the center when it opens,” said Knight. 

The curators responsible for the exhibition are Jessica Quagliaroli, former chief archivist for the YCBA, and Kathy Bohlman, architecture records archivist for Haas Family Arts Library Special Collections.

This exhibition served to garner attention to the space of the YCBA — even when its doors remain closed. 

“We were asked to think of open-while-closed ideas — how to make the museum’s collections and services available to the public while its physical spaces were closed,” Quagliaroli told the News.

Quagliaroli and Bohlman began putting together the exhibition in October 2023, shortly after the YCBA closed its doors. Less than a year later, “People Look Up at Good Architecture” opened in September 2023. 

According to Bohlman, usually a minimum-time of a year is allocated to curate an exhibition. However, since they wanted to have the exhibition on display before the YCBA’s reopening, they were on a tight schedule. 

Bohlman said that the entire process consists of multiple stages of research, writing, selection, layout and final design. 

“It really takes much longer than you might think it would,” said Bohlman.

This process was made even more challenging because materials related to Louis Kahn and the construction of the YCBA remain scattered across the University’s many collections.

Nevertheless, Quagliaroli and Bohlman were able to bring together pieces from the University archives, the Yale School of Architecture collections and YCBA institutional records, among others. According to Quagliaroli, the exhibition includes materials from ten different collections across four repositories. 

“ I think one of our goals was wanting to join together these materials that live in siloed collections, bring them together, and recontextualize them in a new way altogether,” said Quagliaroli.

Haas Arts Library is located at 180 York St.