Artworks that have contributed to making the Yale University Art Gallery's collections among the finest in the world will be on view in the gallery's exhibit "Art for Yale: Defining Moments," which opens on Friday, April 20.

The exhibit, offered as part of Yale's Tercentennial celebration, includes 150 significant works of art that chart the growth of the gallery's collections from its founding in 1832 to the end of the 20th century. Among the works on display are masterpieces by such artists as Rembrandt van Rijn, van Gogh, Picasso, Homer, Copley and Manet.

The objects, selected from each of the museum's curatorial departments, were either the first of their kind to be acquired by the gallery, single masterpieces or representative of groundbreaking collections that swiftly changed the range, depth and teaching possibilities of the Yale Art Gallery. Explanatory narratives, commentaries on video, related timelines, institutional history and records of patrons' gifts provide a context for the art. The exhibit was organized by Helen A. Cooper, the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, and designed by Sara Buie.

The first work of art acquired by the Collegiate School in New Haven -- as Yale was first known -- was a portrait of King George I by Sir Godfrey Kneller, which was part of the 1718 gift from Elihu Yale that caused the school to change its name to Yale College. This painting and a portrait by Ralph Earl, displayed as a preamble to "Defining Moments," were among the 32 works acquired by Yale before the founding of its Trumbull Gallery, the first art museum in America affiliated with a college or university. The gallery was founded with a gift by patriot-artist John Trumbull of 50 of his most important paintings (the number later grew to more than 100) in return for an annuity of $1,000. Trumbull's donations were displayed in a limestone Greek Revival structure on Old Campus, designed by Trumbull himself, which opened to the public on Oct. 25, 1832. Two of the paintings and a number of miniatures represent the founding collection in the exhibition.

The next major and transforming acquisition was the collection of early Italian paintings assembled over many years by author and editor James Jackson Jarves. Financially strapped, he put 119 paintings on exhibition in the recently constructed Yale School of Fine Arts (now called Street Hall) in exchange for a three-year loan of $20,000. In what was described as "one of the most irregular pieces of University finance on record," Yale paid an additional $2,000 over the loan amount to acquire Jarves' collection, considered the most significant assemblage of early Renaissance art outside Europe. This collection is represented in the exhibition by five panel paintings from the 13th and 15th centuries.

Yale's holdings grew in a new direction in 1913, when Rebecca Darlington Stoddard, a resident of New Haven and wife of a Yale alumnus, purchased for the University a collection of more than 900 Greek and Italian vases, several of which are on display. Ancient art was noticeably strengthened two decades later with the installation of the renowned Dura-Europos Collection from the Yale-French Excavations in Syria.

Prints on display by Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn were part of a gift made in 1925 of approximately 150 old master prints from the Fritz Achelis collection. This gift formally established the Print Room.

Yale's holdings in American art were transformed into one of the nation's most significant collections in 1930 with a gift of 5,000 decorative arts objects from Francis P. Garvan of the Yale Class of 1897 in honor of his wife, Mabel Brady Garvan, according to Cooper. Over the decades, the Garvans' gifts and bequests came to number close to 10,000 works of American paintings, prints, sculpture and decorative arts.

The University's strength in Asian art was established with gifts from Mrs. William H. Moore, beginning in 1937, of Chinese bronzes, porcelains and paintings, as well as Japanese prints and Near and Far Eastern textiles. Three years later, the Asian art holdings were greatly enhanced with the donation of early Chinese ceramics by John Hadley Cox '35.

Meanwhile, the Gallery of Fine Arts, as it was then called, continued to attract American art. In 1940, the estate of Edwin Austin Abbey gave more than 2,000 paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints by Abbey. The following year, Maitland Fuller Griggs of the Yale College Class of 1896 gave two masterpieces by John Singleton Copley, which are on view in the exhibition. These were followed by a collection of early Italian paintings.

Among the most significant gifts Yale has received, according to Cooper, is the Société Anonyme Collection of modernist art assembled by Katherine S. Dreier and the artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray between 1920 and 1940, donated to Yale in the 1940s. As a teaching museum, Yale's gallery fit with the collectors' goals, which Dreier once described as "educational ... without the interference of personal taste."

Other major gifts included the John Hill Morgan collection of American portrait miniatures in the 1940s and a gift of Italian and Northern Renaissance paintings. In the 1950s Yale became a center for the study of Asian art.

The first African art to enter Yale's collection came in 1954 from Mr. and Mrs. James M. Osborn. Later in the decade, Fred H. Olsen began his series of gifts of Mexican and Central American antiquities.

In 1961 a group of paintings, now among Yale's most prized treasures, came from Stephen Carlton Clark '03. His bequest included masterworks by Hals, Copley, Eakins, Manet, Homer, Hopper, Picasso and van Gogh, whose "Night Café" continues to draw visitors from all over the world to Yale's gallery.

Other masterpieces by Picasso, van Gogh, Hopper, Homer and Eakins were donated to Yale in 1977 by the estate of artist Josef Albers, who taught at the University. A bequest of 20th-century paintings and drawings by Katharine Orway included the first works by Rothko donated to Yale. Ongoing donations from such art connoisseurs as Paul Mellon, Walter Bareiss, Richard Brown Baker and George Hopper Fitch are also represented in "Defining Moments."

"Art for Yale: Defining Moments" is accompanied by an illustrated narrative history of the Yale University Art Gallery by Susan B. Matheson, the Molly and Walter Bareiss Curator of Ancient Art. This publication will be available this summer.

The exhibit, funded by a grant from The Robert Lehman Foundation Inc., will remain on view through Aug. 19.

Related exhibits

Two smaller exhibits are being offered in conjunction with the exhibit: "The Colossal Keepsake Corporation and Claes Oldenburg's 'Lipstick'" and "A Moment Ongoing: The Legacy of Everett V. Meeks."

A selection of sketches and models related to the creation of Claes Oldenburg's sculpture "Lipstick (Ascending) On Caterpillar Tracks" will be on view in the McNeil Corridor of the gallery through Aug. 19. These works have been lent to Yale by Oldenburg. In addition, the sculpture has been transported from Morse College to the Yale Art Gallery's sculpture garden to complement "Art for Yale: Defining Moments."

"Lipstick" had been commissioned by the Colossal Keepsake Corporation -- a group of students and faculty formed specifically for the purpose of commissioning the work -- and was originally installed in the Beinecke Plaza in 1969. During its first year on campus the work was vandalized, and Oldenburg had it removed. Five years later, Yale art historian Vincent Scully and others persuaded the artist to return a renovated "Lipstick" to the campus, specifically to Morse College, where Scully was then master.

"A Moment Ongoing: The Legacy of Everett V. Weeks" is an exhibition of about 50 works of paper that were donated by Yale alumnus and former School of Fine Arts dean Everett V. Meeks. These include prints by Albrecht Dürer, Marcantonio Raimondi, Jacques Callot, Rembrandt and Honoré Daumier; drawings by Giulio Romano, François Boucher, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Georges Seurat and Charles Demuth; and photographs by Hippolyte-Auguste Collard, Peter Henry Emerson and Gertrude Käsebier.

Meeks, an architect and educator, graduated from Yale College a century ago, when the University was celebrating its bicentennial. He served as dean of the School of Fine Arts from 1920 to 1947. During his tenure, he established 10 museum curatorships in painting and sculpture, works on paper, decorative arts and ancient art. At his death in 1956, Meeks' will established an endowment fund to acquire works of art on paper, with just one stipulation: that the works be at least 50 years old at the time of purchase. The Everett V. Meeks Fund has become the museum's single most important resource for the acquisition of prints, drawings and photographs.

"A Moment Ongoing: The Legacy of Everett V. Weeks" will be on view through Aug. 5.

The Yale University Art Gallery, corner of Chapel and York streets, is open to the public free of charge 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and 1-6 p.m. Sunday. An entrance for person using wheelchairs is located at 201 York St., with an unmetered parking space nearby. For information on access, call (203) 432-0606. For general and program information, call (203) 432-0600 or visit the museum's website at www.yale.edu/artgallery.

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