DISCOVERY, REFLECTION, AND COMMUNITYYACOL OUTINGS ACROSS THE COUNTRY IN 2024
Last year saw activity in nearly every city where YACOL has revived its in-person courses post-pandemic.
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LOUIS ARMSTRONG HOUSE MUSEUM
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This was an early summer highlight! A full story on the house tour and Juneteenth garden concert is featured in the main newsletter.
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 | Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and (from left) vocalist Svetlana Scmulyan; David Ostwald, tuba; Jason Clotter, bass; Alvin Atkinson, Jr., drumset; Bria Skonerg, trumpet and vocal; and Anat Cohen, clarinet, performing under the honey locusts and pines in the Armstrong garden.
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WALKING TOUR OF
THE ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHOLOGY (IIT)
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On June 29, over twenty-five Yale alumni, family, and friends set out on a YACOL-sponsored walking tour of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus led by Reed Kroloff, dean of the IIT College of Architecture, nationally renowned leader in the fields of architecture, urbanism, and design, and an ‘82 graduate of Yale College. Located on the south side of Chicago, the IIT campus, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, boasts the world’s largest collection of buildings designed by legendary architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
--Photos and captions provided by Laurie Treuhaft ‘73, Member, Yale Alumni College Board.
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 | As he led the group across IIT’s many quadrangles, Reed provided background on Mies van der Rohe, the history and tenets of modernist architecture, and the relationship between IIT and its neighboring community. Mies originated the now well-known phrase “less is more” to describe the simplicity of modernist architecture and its harmony of form and function.
| |  | Reed sinks feet first into a grassy patch to demonstrate that the building’s columns stop at—and thus indicate—the level of the first-floor slab, rather than the ground.
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 | Exiting the arcade-like McCormick Tribune Campus Center, the Yale group found itself smack under the Chicago L’s Green Line, where Reed, unfazed, went on with the tour as the train rattled overhead.
| |  | The walking tour culminated at S.R. Crown Hall, a National Historic Landmark widely considered to be Mies’s American masterpiece. Inside the spacious glass and steel, column-free structure, seemingly endless rows of rectangular terrazzo floor panels exactly mirror the plan dimensions of the building, exemplifying yet another famous Mies quote: “God is in the details.”
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NEW HAVEN MUSEUM
“SHINING LIGHT ON TRUTH: NEW HAVEN, YALE, AND SLAVERY”
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On September 21, nearly thirty Yale alumni, family, and friends joined a YACOL outing at the New Haven Museum, where the exhibit “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery” is on display through March 2025. Following an introduction by exhibit curators Michael J. Morand (Class of 1987, MDIV Class of 1993), director of community engagement at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Charles E. Warner Jr., chair of the Dixwell Church History Committee and the Connecticut Freedom Trail, the group moved into the museum rotunda, where exhibit designer David Jon Walker (MFA, Class of 2023) discussed his thoughtful, creative and deeply moving choices.
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Before the tour, exhibit curator Michael Morand gave an introduction highlighting knowledge that till now had been largely unknown or ignored, including New Haven’s opportunity to become the home of the first U.S. historically Black college nearly two hundred years ago.
-Photo provided by Laura Kisthardt, associate pastor, First Congregational Church, Southington, CT (Yale Divinity School, Class of 2020)
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Laura Kisthardt, associate pastor of the First Congregational Church in Southington, CT, wrote:
“This special exhibit, Shining Light on Truth, had been on my ‘to visit’ list since it opened. Seeing the announcement by the Yale Alumni College brought it to my attention and I’m so glad I finally made the time to visit. Here is one photo from the exhibit that really stood out to me. The names of the enslaved on the wall might not have caught my attention if it hadn’t been for the extra explanation that our guides offered. They noted that they had worked with a professional calligrapher to craft the display of the names. They wanted this part of the exhibit to convey the gravitas and importance of the names. This stuck with me all these months later because often walking around Yale buildings, we see so many names written or carved on plaques. These names matter. The stories of those who were enslaved by Yale’s founders, trustees, faculty, etc., matter too.”
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YALE ART GALLERY- MUNCH AND KIRCHNER: ANXIETY AND EXPRESSION
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 | On May 11, a group of twenty (the maximum number allowed by the Yale Art Gallery) gathered to view and discuss the work of Expressionists Edvard Munch and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Both were printmakers who experimented with color and abstraction to convey their own visions of modern life. The tour was led by Stephanie Wiles, Henry J. Heinz II director of the Yale Art Gallery, and Freyda Spira, exhibit curator.
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 | Art Gallery Director Stephanie Wiles takes a closer look at Munch and Kirchner prints with YACOL guests. The discussion continued over a group lunch following the tour.
| |  | Curator Freyda Spira said that both artists struggled with anxiety and depression brought on by the First World War and the rise of Nazism. Their radical visions of the modern world and the state of their mental and physical health were often evident in the works they produced.
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"THE DANCE OF LIFE:
FIGURE AND IMAGINATION IN AMERICAN ART, 1876–1917"
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 | On December 7, a YACOL group of twenty viewed “The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917”, an exhibition of figure studies for public artworks from the period known as the American Renaissance. A response to the Civil War, the American Renaissance represented a radical shift toward a more vibrant art that emphasized light and motion. It was also a more political art that condemned slavery. Artists sought to project the idealism of the Progressive Era into a wide range of ambitious new civic buildings and spaces, and they chose human figures as their subject because “in a democracy, the people are the country,” explained tour guide Mark D. Mitchell, the art gallery’s curator of American paintings and sculpture.
| |  | Studies of the human figure on display included pencil sketches, watercolors, and sculpted maquettes. Mitchell told an interviewer for the Fall 2024 Yale University Art Gallery Magazine that studies can be more interesting than finished works because they show the artists’ ideas in formation. “The Dance of Life” tour ended with a sketching session in which everyone participated.
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SOFT POWER AT THE SIGNATURE THEATRE
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 | Following the September 12, 2024 performance of David Henry Hwang and Jeanne Tesori’s musical Soft Power at the Signature Theatre in Washington, DC, director, Ethan Heard (Yale College, Class of 2006; School of Drama, Class of 2013) and three faculty members of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service held a discussion about the role of art in diplomacy for an invited audience of Yale alumni and Signature Theatre patrons. Panelists, pictured here from left to right, were Dean Joel Hellman, Assistant Professor Rush Doshi, Distinguished Professor Cynthia Schneider, and Director, Ethan Heard. With the presidential election in full swing at the time, the conversation inevitably riffed on the showstopping and hopeful song, Democracy, and its resonance in that moment.
--Photo and caption provided by Lane Heard ‘73, Member, Yale Alumni College Board
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