Yale builds new art house for its students

For the past month, 1156 Chapel St. has been noteworthy largely for the traffic problems it causes at the intersection of York and Chapel streets. But for many, it carries personal meaning as the old Jewish Community Center, a remnant of New Haven before urban renewal closed the center's doors in 1986. In order to create a way to let the community express its thoughts on the building's history and its restored future as the home of the Yale School of Art, Dean Hakamoto, a professor at the Yale School of Architecture, designed the "Progress Wall." A collection of alternately nostalgic and incendiary statements from New Havenites outside 1156 Chapel St., Hakamoto described the wall as "the skin on the surface of all this history in the area." For weeks now, though, the wall has been obscured by construction - evidence of a construction schedule nearing completion, according to Lawrence Regan, a Yale architect overseeing the restoration. It could open to students and faculty as early as June of 2000.

JESSICA DIMSON/YH Productions will be housed in the new art department building, and classes formerly held in the Art and Architecture building (above) will also change locations.

Named for the building's chief donor Holcomb T. Green, SY '61, the new facility will house graphic design, painting, printmaking, and photography studios and classes for the Yale School of Art. It will also contain a multi-story gallery in the remodeled JCC gymnasium and a "black box" experimental theater in the location of the former JCC auditorium. This will likely be put to use by the School of Drama, although the Dramat may also have access. Together with its smaller sister facility at 353 Crown St., which will contain studios for graduate art students, the new school will be the southernmost non-medical building on the Yale campus. It will also be pivotal in Yale's long-term effort to form a more concentrated "arts area," providing separate spaces for each department while consolidating its arts facilities in one location on the periphery of campus.

For Hakamoto, the impending opening of the building means redesigning the "Progress Wall" for its third, and final, permutation before the construction barricade comes down. This incarnation will likely feature opinions from art students about what they think the Chapel Street building will and should be. But the building's opening might also mean an end to Hakamoto's vision of civic cooperation and interaction. "Will it be open to the community after Yale moves in?" he asked. "I'm not sure."

Exactly who will be using the space and why is a point of contention not only in New Haven, but also among professors in the various arts disciplines at Yale. Stacey Gemmill, director of Yale financial affairs for the School of Art, noted that the facility was specifically designed for art students based on requests made several years earlier. "We had to fight to get what we needed," she said. To an extent, though, the School of Art also had to take what it was offered. "We were told from the beginning that we would share the space with the School of Drama," Gemmill said. "You have to understand that Yale is the client, not the department. We told them what we needed in terms of facilities and assignable square footage, [and] they cut it down based on cost."

School of Art Dean Richard Benson agreed, noting that despite efforts to consolidate, the sculpture department is still located in Hammond Hall on Whitney Avenue. Yet for Benson, the move to Chapel Street, which will probably begin this December, offers several advantages—especially in quality of life. "We expect a much better HVAC system, much better ventilation, decent air, light, heating," he explained. "And people of like minds like to be together." Besides improved possibilities for collaboration, a location physically on the fringes of Yale campus might encourage more freedom of experimentation for student artists, Benson said.

Other faculty members were not as sure about the potential benefits of the facilities for students across the arts disciplines. According to David Krasner, the director of undergraduate studies for the theater studies department, moving Yale arts to a more geographically remote location on campus reflects Yale's view that they should be physically distanced from more traditional scholarly fields like English and history. Characterizing the new facilities as an "arts area" might not be too far from thinking of them as an "arts ghetto." "Theater is perceived as a vocation," he said. "It goes against the spirit and ideals of Yale University. Theater is thought of as something that belongs in a conservatory, not on a major liberal arts campus. We've been trying very hard to legitimate ourselves academically for years." Krasner fought for funds to renovate the Whitney Humanities Center gymnasium—the only official theater open for use to the undergraduate theater studies major—that includes new lighting grids and an improved dressing room. It recently re-opened for student use. Krasner also noted that the new facility was never offered to him. "I don't know anything about it, except that we won't be using it," he said.

Indeed, Krasner's view echoes many of the undergraduates who will likely use the facilities next year. Liz Livingston, BR '01, an art major with a concentration in painting, will take the majority of her classes at the Chapel Street building, yet she has not heard about the move or the new studio space. "I think a lot of the new space is going to go to grad students," she said. "Right now, I'm pretty happy with the art school as it is. It's convenient for me, going to Chapel. That's what's most important." Living-ston said that she hadn't realized that there was a request, or even a need, for new arts facilities.

Likewise, Thomas Pearson, BK '01, current secretary for the Dramat, apparently knew neither what the facilities would include, nor that his group might have access to it for its experimental productions. "I hadn't heard that undergraduates would have anything to do with it," he said. According to Gemmill, although most students have not been told about their new institutional home, the artists who will use the Holcomb facility will be contacted by the provost's office, probably by early summer.

Despite the benefits of the new building, current Yale facilities still might not be enough for undergraduate needs. For Ryan Karels, BR '00, a former member of the Dramat board and the director of Marat/Sade—an undergraduate experimental show that went up two weeks ago—Yale doesn't come close to satisfying the needs of its art students. "I think it's fantastic, but it's still not enough," he said. "Of course, we'll take what we can get. But I guarantee that if the University opened up four new theater spaces, they'd be booked all the time." Karels speculated, however, that Yalies tend to operate best when they have their own space, both between the graduate and undergraduate levels and the disparate Yale arts programs. Even with a theater in the Holcomb building, he doubted that visual arts students would influence and inform drama students.

All of this seems like a far cry from Hakamoto's communal ideal. But Hakamoto still hopes that Yale art facilities can serve the community and the University's students in the future, no matter what the political climate may be now. "Yale was the first university to have a school of art, and that was Street Hall," he said. "It was also the first university building to address Chapel Street. I think that Yale arts will continue to have a presence in the city."

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