Newest Yale Gallery To Showcase International Art

Published: January 30, 2009

Ram Rahman’s photograph “Mehndi Party, Devigarh, 2004” is part of “Shifting Shapes — Unstable Signs,” the debut exhibition in the School of Art’s newest gallery, which will present four shows per year of contemporary international art.

New Haven, Conn. — A new Yale gallery that will be devoted to bringing examples of contemporary art from around the world to New Haven formally opened on Jan. 26 with the exhibition "Shifting Shapes - Unstable Signs," featuring recent work in diverse media by artists from India and the Indian Diaspora.

The gallery is located at 32 Edgewood Ave., adjacent to a new studio building dedicated to the Yale School of Art's sculpture program. It will house approximately four new exhibitions each year.

"The art world is no longer centered in New York or, for that matter, anywhere in particular," says Robert Storr, dean of the School of Art.

The new gallery, he notes, "will break out of the North-American/East-Coast-centered view of the art world, bringing to our students, staff and the public ‘breaking news' from a diversity of international artists. This is but one example of the ways in which the school is forging active links with cultural centers from São Paulo to Beijing; from Moscow to Johannesburg; from Madrid to Istanbul."

In a reflection of the School of Art's efforts to train artists for a variety of career paths, students will assist in all aspects of organizing exhibitions for the new gallery - from selecting and installing the works to writing about them, publishing brochures, and more. In this way, notes Storr, the gallery will serve as a classroom or workshop in which students learn firsthand how exhibitions are conceived and produced, how art occupies space, how site-specific art may be created for a particular space, and how context informs content.

"Shifting Shapes - Unstable Signs," on view through Feb. 27, was organized by Storr and Jaret Vadera, a student in the School of Art. The exhibition focuses on the elusive nature of the signs and symbols of cultural, national and gender identity that are used in contemporary art from South Asia. Among the artists represented are Chitra Ganesh, Shilpa Gupta, Abir Karmakar, Bhupen Khakhar, Bharti Kher, Riyas Komu, Nalini Malani, Ram Rahman, Tejal Shah and Vivan Sundaram.

The show is open to the public free of charge 11 a.m.- 6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. There will be panel discussions in conjunction with the exhibition in February at the School of Art.

The new School of Art gallery and the adjacent studio building are part of a complex designed by KieranTimberlake Associates, that also includes an adjacent parking garage with retail space on its ground floor. The complex has received a LEED Platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council — the first such award for any building in the State of Connecticut.

The studio building provides improved facilities for Yale's sculpture program, including state-of-the-art equipment and private studios bathed in natural light, as well as large spaces for the creation and display of monumental sculpture.

The award-winning complex, to which access is provided from all four surrounding blocks, also includes an outdoor courtyard that will contain a site-specific sculpture by School of Art Professor Jessica Stockholder, director of graduate studies in sculpture. This work is designed to unify the studio building and gallery, creating a hub for the School of Art.

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