This exhibition showcases mural-size prints from the late fifteenth century to 1630, when ambitions—to rival painted images, to assert and justify political rule, or simply to adorn wall surfaces—prompted printed imagery to expand. Surviving in far fewer numbers than smaller prints, mural-size print ensembles sometimes reached over ten feet in height and stretched to sixteen feet in length. Grand Scale displays approximately fifty oversize prints from the German, Italian, and Netherlandish schools, including compositions by Sandro Botticelli, Albrecht Dürer, Titian, Jacopo Tintoretto, Bartholomaeus Spranger, and Peter Paul Rubens.

Exhibition organized by the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, and supported by major gifts from the Marjorie and Gerald Bronfman Foundation, Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, and Wellesley College Friends of Art with additional funds from International Fine Print Dealers Association. Presentation at the Yale University Art Gallery organized by Suzanne Boorsch, the Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and made possible by Mr. and Mrs. Frederic D. Wolfe, B.S. 1951, on behalf of The Wolfe Family Charitable Foundation. Image: Albrecht Dürer, Wolf Traut, Hans Springinklee, and Albrecht Altdorfer, after Jorg Kölderer, The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I, 1515 (Bartsch edition, 1799) Woodcut (42 woodcuts and 2 etchings; original edition printed from 192 blocks). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of David P. Tunick and Elizabeth S. Tunick, in honor of the appointment of Andrew Robison as Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator

Celebrating a major gift of over two hundred photographs from the collection of Allan Chasanoff, B.A. 1961, this exhibition will explore the seldom-discussed phenomenon of optical confusion in photography. Drawn from the Chasanoff Collection, as well as from the Gallery's permanent collection, First Doubt will feature approximately one hundred photographs by a diverse array of photographers across the twentieth century. Seen together, they reveal the interpretive nature of the lens and the interpolative nature of the photograph.

Exhibition organized by Joshua Chuang, the Marcia Brady Tucker Assistant Curator of Photographs, Yale University Art Gallery. Made possible by an endowment created with a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florence B. Selden Fund, with additional support provided by Mr. Allan K. Chasanoff, B.A. 1961. Image: Imogen Cunningham, Roi (detail), 1927, printed 1993. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery, The Allan Chasanoff, B.A. 1961, Photography Collection

Tea Culture of Japan: Chanoyu Past and Present illuminates the importance of Japanese tea culture and examines the ways in which it has evolved over the centuries. Imported to Japan from China during the ninth century, the custom of serving tea did not become widespread until the thirteenth century. Before the rise of the simple wabi aesthetic, tea service involved precious objects imported from China and displayed lavishly in a large room. By the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, powdered tea was ceremonially prepared by a skilled tea master and served to a small group of guests in a tranquil setting; this way of preparing tea became known as chanoyu. Tea Culture of Japan brings together approximately one hundred objects—drawn largely from distinguished private collections and supplemented by the works in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery—produced for use in the practice of chanoyu. Objects on view will range from the ninth century through the present day, and will include ceramic tea bowls, wooden tea scoops, metal used-water containers, and lacquered sake flasks and servers, as well as folding screens that evoke the early stage of tea development in Japan.

Exhibition and publication organized by Sadako Ohki, the Japan Foundation Associate Curator of Japanese Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. Image: Ido Tea Bowl, Japanese or Korean, Yi (Choson) dynasty, sixteenth century. Stoneware with crackled glaze. Yale University Art Gallery, Promised gift of Peggy and Richard M. Danziger, LL.B. 1936

Over the last century, countless books and exhibitions have examined the constantly changing aspects of Pablo Picasso’s art and personal life. Despite this flux, an element that remained constant in his life was his friendships with writers and his interest in the written word. Building on the rich collection of artworks and materials at the Yale University Art Gallery and the Gertrude Stein Archives at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Picasso and the Allure of Language will survey for the first time the relationship between art and literature, and painting and writing, in Picasso’s work. The exhibition includes approximately eighty objects and begins with an examination of the close friendships between the artist and writers at the Bateau-Lavoir and concludes with the postwar period, when Picasso became an international celebrity and could be said to have become a “text” himself. In the spirit of sharing our collection with other colleges and universities, the show is traveling in the fall of 2009 to the Nasher Museum at Duke University, and features loans of major Picasso sculptures from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection in Dallas.

Exhibition and publication organized by Susan Greenberg Fisher, the Horace W. Goldsmith Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Supported by an endowment created with a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with additional endowment support provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; Ketcham Family Memorial Fund; George and Schatzie Lee Fund;  Carol and Sol LeWitt Fund; Leah G. and Allan C. Rabinowitz Yale College Class of 1954 Fund; and Edward Byron Smith Jr. Family Fund. Image: Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Calling Card, 1914. Collage. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University