Still Life With Mellon

Yale British Art Gallery
At the updated Yale Center for British Art, you will start at either end of the broad spectrum between Tracey Emin and J.M.W. Turner. Photo: Michael Ipsen/Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art
Marion Maneker
March 28, 2025

Late last week, Yale hosted an open house at the Yale Center for British Art, which had been closed for two years as they updated the building—one of the last works of brutalist architect Louis Kahn, who died in 1974. Completed in 1977, the center needed a new roof, and the skylights that were essential to Kahn’s mostly windowless design needed to be replaced. Since light was the theme of the renovation, Yale also swapped out the halogen lighting throughout the building for LEDs, and also replaced the “laylight cassettes,” which allow the center to calibrate the sunlight that enters the galleries of the permanent collection.