New Haven Excursion - Part One

Yale University Art Gallery

Located on Chapel Street in downtown New Haven, the Yale University Art Gallery is open free of charge to the public. The gallery recently, along with the British Art museum, went through a large renovation project. The result is a four-level modern building with the exhibits, both permanent and special showing, segregated into different groups such as African Art, Asian Art, and European and American Art. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and go to both the Art Gallery and the Center for British Art on the same day since they were across the street from one another. I tried to do this last weekend, but parking proved to be a massive hassle and I left unfulfilled. This weekend, I came prepared with cash for the parking garage on York Street and this proved to be much easier and much less of a headache than the previous weekend. So far I have decided that museums outside of the city are the way to go for me because with a city museum, parking is always an issue if you drive. But, find a nearby parking garage on a nice sunny, fall day and things aren't so bad.

The flow to the museum was not as smooth as other museums that I have visited. Each floor is divided between two exhibits with the separator being the elevator in a small corridor. I felt like I was doing a lot of back-tracking to make sure I saw everything there was to see. Also with this museum, a lot of the pieces of art are in the open air on a pedestal around the room. Knowing I am not allowed to touch the artifacts was the only thing that kept me from doing so. You can walk right up to a lot of the pieces and breathe on them. This made me particulary nervous so I was very watchful about where I stepped and what my surroundings were which took away some of the experience - I was concentrating onnot knocking over a priceless bust of a greek politician to really take in the full concept of the bust. Would I have preferred that the pieces be behind glass? Perhaps. I think I would have felt more secure about the pieces but whose to say that glass would protect it from falling to the floor and shattering if someone bumped into the glass?

The one piece that really took my mind off of my nervousnes

s and just swallowed my attention whole was a votive out of gray schist in the Asian Art collection. This piece is called "Footprints of the Buddha" and was found in ancient Gandhara which is located in modern day northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. It was made during the Kushan period in Asian Art. The Kushan dynasty was the first in which images of Buddha began to appear. In Gandhara, the art that was produced was heavily influenced by the Roman Empire.

This is a beautiful carving and I was drawn to it by the fact that instead of a figure of Buddha, the feet were used as an iconic representation. I am sure the symbols on the side as well as along the border of the piece have significance, but the reason I decided to write about this piece was due to

the swastikas in the toes. The swastika, which in modern times is the unarguable symbol of the Nazis, came from Buddhist images from Asia. The symbol is really a representation of the sun. I learned the origin of the swastika in Asian Art (which I took at AMC and recommend) and found it interesting here because of what I have learned from various art and history classes over the years. One of the most basic techniques of any group, tribe, nation, etc. is to adopt the symbols and customs of other nations into their own social identities. If you read Dan Brown novels at all, you are familiar with Christians taking Druid and pagan symbols and rituals and adding them to their own practice. Essentially, the Nazis did the same thing. It was adopted by the party in 1920 and into its final appearance on a red flag encased in a white circle in 1925 - designed by Hitler himself. As a result, most of the Western world recognizes this symbol as pure evil, where in antiquity, it stood for the sun and was used in artwork depicting the most peaceful entity the world knows he - Buddha.

The Asian art collection was gorgeous, and the pieces from Greco-Roman and Assyrian times were fantastic, but I want to make a special mention of the column to the right. When I took Art

History I at Gateway Community College in New Haven, we went to the old Yale Art Gallery and had to pick a piece on display from either Greco-Roman, Assyrian, early Asian or European history prior to the Renaissance. I chose this same column back in 2003 when I took the course. I learned the column was from an abbey long destroyed now in France, and that pieces of the abbey that were discovered at the dig site are located at The Cloisters in NYC. This particular column depicts the Adoration of the Magi - a common theme for religous stone work in medieval times. I remember writing about the zig-zag pattern on the shaft of the column and the four different scenes at the top. I was attached to the column the first moment I laid eyes on it and have always referred to it as "my column" for some reason. I have not seen it since my one trip to the gallery those six years ago, but when I saw it on Saturday, I instantly thought "There's my column". Just wanted to share that :)