NewHavenBIZ

34 n e w h a v e n B I Z | N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m YALE MUSEUMS Continued from Page 33 It also adds another star attrac- tion to Yale's West campus — made up of 17 buildings totaling 1.6 million square feet on 136 acres. Yale acquired the complex from Bayer Pharmaceutical in 2007, paying $109 million for the site and buildings, making it a kind of under-the-radar "Yale West." But it's not as if the Furniture Study never existed or was com- pletely out of sight when it was in downtown New Haven. It was? Oh, didn't you know? "It's always been open to the public since it was founded in 1959," explains Patricia Kane, the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts. For decades the collection — armoires, chairs, tables, desks, mirrors, cupboards, sideboards, desks, clocks, couches and wooden objects dating from the 17th century to the present day — was housed in the "zero ambiance" basement of 149 York Street. e proximity to Yale's other museums and classes was ideal — but the building that housed it was not. e old basement site had "lots of issues," says Kane, including fluctuations in temperature and humidity, narrow aisles, inade- quate exhibition space and the fact that the building had water leaks and was prone to flooding. e basement's ceiling height — or rather lack of height — with pipes crisscrossing the ceiling, meant that many of the taller pieces could not be presented there and were further exiled into "dark storage." e administration realized the collection needed a better solution to the priceless collection but it couldn't commit to a vast facility in downtown New Haven where real estate has been increasingly at a premium — and which Yale already had long-term plans for many of the finite number of prime extant exhibition locations. e decision was made to relocate the Furniture Study to the West Haven campus seven miles from downtown New Haven, where the pieces could finally be presented in a safe, open, accessible and hospitable space. "ey wanted to build out the arts component of the West Haven cam- pus and it soon became clear that our future was there," says Kane. Instead of the former 12,000 square feet of space, the collection now has nearly 18,000 square feet, presented on two levels. "Now there are soaring ceilings, state-of-the-art lighting, and temperature and humidity controls," says John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts. And who attends the weekly tours? "Students, faculty and people who collect and people who just love these pieces," Gordon explains. "e Study has always been that cross between a teaching space and an exhibition space, and we want to continue that and broaden that. "You don't need to know anything about furniture to take Public tours take place each Friday at the Furniture Study.

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