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New Haven Arts & Artifacts

Yale's Peabody Musuem of Natural History is home to more than 11 million specimens and objects. The museum's collections include objects that are the only surviving traces of animals, plants and cultures that have become extinct.

Yale owns a priceless collection of paintings, prints, sculpture, and historical artifacts in the world-renowned Yale Art Gallery and adjacent Yale Center for British Art. Next to campus, the Audubon Arts district offers a music school, theaters, fine arst school, and workshops and is the perfect place to dabble in photography or take a course in painting. The Peabody Museum of Natural History, residing on the main campus, holds the imposing Hall of Dinosaurs and numerous other animal and geological exhibits. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library contains ancient papyri, a Gutenberg Bible, and other historical treasures.

Music

Pablo Picasso's "First Steps", which is part of the Yale Art Gallery's collection. The Yale University Art Gallery is the oldest college art museum in the United States. The gallery was founded in 1832, when John Trumbull donated more than 100 paintings of the American Revolution to Yale College.

New Haven is Connecticut’s center for the arts and music. First and foremost is the free summertime concert series on the New Haven Green, which draws thousands annually to hear artists such as Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, and even Kool and the Gang. Just preceding the summertime concerts is the enormously successful “International Festival of Arts and Ideas,” a three week long celebration of arts and music that fills indoor and outdoor venues daily with dance, discussion, drama, film, art, and music. Recent headline acts included free outdoor performances by Susan Tedeschi, Harry Belafonte, and the NY Metropolitan Opera. Throughout the city are many clubs and venues that offer live pop, rock, and alternative acts. For example, Toad’s Place, one of the country’s best-known nightclubs, features artists from all genres; even Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones have appeared at this special club. Yale’s own “GPSCY” (Graduate and Professional Student Center at Yale, pronounced “Gypsy”), owned and operated by Yale graduate and professional students, hosts its own live acts throughout the year.

For classical music lovers, New Haven maintains one of the most active classical music performance schedules anywhere outside New York. There are several local orchestras, including the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Yale Philharmonic Orchestra, the Yale Concert Band, Orchestra New England, and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the third oldest orchestra of its kind in the country. The world famous Yale School of Music hosts several orchestral and chamber concert series that continually attract top artists from around the world. There is a summer chamber music series at the Yale-owned Ellen Battelle Stoeckel estate in scenic Norfolk, Connecticut, as well as many faculty and student recital series.

Theater

The Yale Reperatory Theater, founded in 1966, is one of America's leading professional theaters.

The city’s Shubert Theater is famous for launching The King and I, The Sound of Music, and countless other famous musicals that world-premiered in New Haven. Today the theater continues its tradition of debuting productions that go on to become Broadway hits and also books dramas, dance, and Broadway touring productions. The Long Wharf Theatre spotlights works written by the likes of John Guare, Al Pacino, and David Rabe and performed by personalities that include Julie Harris, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Joanne Woodward, and Sam Waterston. The Yale Repertory Theatre remains at the cutting edge of American theater, and the Yale Cabaret offers dinner theater at very reasonable prices. The Elm Shakespeare troupe brings free outdoor theater to New Haven audiences each summer.