The Arts Library at Yale:
Bridging Change and Continuity
The Arts Library will be housed within the A+A Building and the adjoining Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art.
View floor plans.
Over a decade in the planning, the new Arts Library facility now under design at Yale University fulfills a unique and treasured vision. Its design and construction will help us achieve two intimately related goals. The Arts Library will reflect and meet the changing needs of teaching, research and learning in the arts area at Yale, based in large part on the growing impact of technology in all aspects of academic engagement. At the same time, it will represent a profound commitment to the unique, material character of the visual and the book arts, through assembling and making accessible some of the most important special collections in the world, alongside a distinguished research library collection and a burgeoning digital presence. In short, we see the new Arts Library facility incorporating the best of change and continuity—through the first-ever consolidation of the majority of its collections, staff, and other resources now separated and isolated across the Yale campus.
See details on the Arts Library spaces
Floor plans for the Arts Library
By physically combining the principal collections and integrating the public services of the Art and Architecture, Arts of the Book, Drama, and Visual Resources departments, the Arts Library will become the physical and intellectual center for the pursuit of the diverse interests and curiosities driving research, teaching, learning, and practice of the arts at Yale. Through careful and creative space planning, we anticipate an environment encouraging individual energy and community spirit, as well as quiet contemplation and focus. We seek to make the best use of all of our public and staff spaces by fostering the utmost ingenuity and flexibility in our program and design, the principal objectives of which are unification and integration.
The Bridge
The architectural firm of Gwathmey Siegal Associates has designed the new Arts Library facility to act as the physical and symbolic bridge uniting the School of Architecture and the Department of the History of Art by occupying space in both the renovated Art and Architecture building and the newly-constructed History of Art building adjacent to it. The Arts Library spaces will embody both the spirit of Paul Rudolph’s mid-century masterpiece and the best of contemporary library design.
In the design, each area internal to the Arts Library relates to one another through key functional and physical adjacencies: of collections and services, but also of readers, books and magazines, computers, multi-media, an array of original and primary source material. Bonding it all together is the talented and expert staff brought together for the first time to work as a dedicated team providing the range of assistance, guidance, and interpretation needed in an increasingly complex world of information needs and expectations.
Anchoring the Arts Library space, its glass curtain wall forming a dramatic feature of the central, two-story atrium, will be the new Special Collections Research Center. The Arts Library Special Collections Research Center realizes a long-planned for consolidation of the many special collections across the Arts Library. The Special Collections Research Center brings together in one place important and in many cases, unique, holdings from Arts of the Book, the Art and Architecture Library (including the Faber Birren Collection of Books on Color, one of the most comprehensive of its kind), and the Drama Library collections and archives of an unsurpassed importance to the history and contemporary practice of American and world theatre. The Arts of the Book department over the last few years has gained an international reputation as the research repository of some of the most important examples of fine art book production, including a significant collection of contemporary artist’s books and exemplars of hand- and machine-crafted graphic arts. The Arts of the Book department is also growing in significance to teaching and learning at Yale, as faculty and students are exposed to its rich holdings and specialist knowledge.
Within the Arts Library, another significant emphasis will be placed on its diverse range of image and media collections, of central importance to the study and teaching of visual and performing arts, and now to be brought together for the first time. The Arts Library design reflects our ongoing commitment to the many physical manifestations we collect and make available—slides, photographs, audio flies, video, multi-media—and also to the digital transition of these materials, and its impact on all phases of arts research, teaching and learning. The new Arts Library design will reflect the increasingly interactive nature of digital technology, and the need for strategic and creative forms of intervention as well as production capacity. Therefore, we envision the Image and Media Collections department occupying different spaces in the Arts Library facility—those dedicated to the production side of digital transition, and those dedicated to the ever-more important public services side.
The Center
Libraries have traditionally been viewed as repositories of books and other materials and this important function continues to be a key developmental focus of the new Arts Library facility. Open range and compact shelving will house a significant portion of the library book and periodical holdings, and almost all of it will be available to readers to browse through on their own. At the same time, libraries are increasingly important as gathering places and centers of collaboration. Such an emphasis is especially important to the arts area, where several of the programs the Arts Library supports, including the Schools of Architecture and Drama, are based on collaborative activity. Even programs long thought to be based on solitary work, such as the History of Art and studio arts, are adding a collaborative aspect as well, and the curatorial and research staff of the Yale art museums have long depended on collegial effort. Therefore, the Arts Library spaces will encourage, as much as possible, group activity and study, informal social exchange and communication, as well as providing the all important “quiet zones” necessary to individual study and contemplation.
Our staff will never be far from our readers and the Arts Library building program features public services in several forms, from clear and helpful directional signage and other cues, to destinations for a variety of assistance, from general information to in-depth reference and technology support. The Arts Library public services staff also act as instructors and trainers for readers and library staff, and we will provide an on-site instructional lab in addition to public computer workstations and copying and scanning facilities.
Our aim is to provide a variety of spaces and furnishings to meet a range of reader and staff needs. Our main reading room brings reading tables and book stacks together for ready access and ease of use. The library space accommodates several soft-seating areas for relaxation and quiet conversation. There will also be enclosed group study areas, including a classroom in the Special Collections Research Center. New staff offices and work areas represent the opportunity to bring together a team of people, many of whom now work in relative or actual isolation.
“Make No Small Plans”
In short, while Arts Library spaces differ in size and function, they are all important in terms of realizing the overall vision and mission of the Arts Library. In such a carefully conceived and executed plan, it is very hard in fact to think about any one space without its adjacencies, interlocking design, and underlying concept. Or, to paraphrase the nineteenth-century Chicago architect, Daniel Burnham, in the new Arts Library at Yale, there are indeed no small plans, nor are there small spaces or ideas.
See details on the Arts Library spaces
Floor plans for the Arts Library
