Yale Center for British Art
City: New Haven
The Yale Center for British Art houses the largest collection of British art outside the UK. It holds over 2,000 paintings, 250 sculptures, 20,000 drawings and watercolors, and 40,000 prints. Visitors explore centuries of British artistic achievement from the Elizabethan era to the present day.
The Yale Center for British Art presents a robust slate of exhibitions in 2026 that explore global exchange, artistic innovation, and the evolving relationship between art, history, and commerce.
From February 7 through July 26, 2026, Rina Banerjee: Take me, take me, take me . . . to the Palace of love marks the first public display of the artist’s large-scale sculpture since its acquisition in 2023. Suspended in the museum’s Entrance Court and visible from the street, the work reinterprets the form of the Taj Mahal using contemporary materials such as steel, copper, and pink cellophane. Incorporating objects that reference colonial history and global consumer culture, the installation invites reflection on movement, memory, and cultural exchange.
Opening February 12 and running through August 9, 2026, Going Modern: British Art, 1900–1960 explores six transformative decades in British art through more than seventy paintings and sculptures from the museum’s collection. Featuring works by artists including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Lucian Freud, and Francis Bacon, the exhibition traces how British artists engaged with modernism amid profound social and political change, developing distinctive approaches that continue to influence contemporary art.
On view through May 31, 2026, Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850 examines the artistic networks shaped by the rise of the British East India Company. Featuring architectural drawings, watercolors, aquatints, portraits, and a striking thirty-seven-foot scroll depicting the city of Lucknow, the exhibition highlights how Indian, British, and Chinese artists adapted diverse traditions to a rapidly expanding global economy. Many works are drawn from the museum’s collection and will be displayed publicly for the first time, accompanied by a scholarly publication offering international perspectives.
Image credit: Long Gallery, fourth floor, Yale Center for British Art, photograph by Richard Caspole
1080 Chapel St, New Haven, CT 06510, USA
203-432-2800
