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Art, Bricks, and Mortar
January/February 2005
Yale University President Rick Levin ’74PhD was interviewed by Kathrin Day Lassila ’81

Y: The architecture building—the concrete Paul Rudolph building on the corner of Chapel and York—has just been chosen for a postage stamp series on great contemporary U.S. buildings. But it badly needs renovation. Is it true that there’s been a delay in the planned renovations?

L: Yes. We had developed a plan to connect two buildings: the architecture building—the A&A building, as we used to call it—and a new art building for the art history department to be constructed on the lot next door on York Street. It is a wonderful plan, but we had to slow down for two reasons. First, the current version of the plan is just too expensive, and, second, a donor who had intended to make a very generous gift ran into financial difficulties. I’m working on raising more funds, and we will be developing an alternative design for the art history building.

Y: As I understand it, there’s a kind of domino effect with the plans. The architecture building has to be renovated before the Art Gallery can be completely renovated.

L: That’s right. The plan is for the Art Gallery to occupy the entire old gallery building on Chapel Street, and then extend across the High Street bridge and take over Street Hall. That requires art history to move to their new building. And we can’t renovate the architecture building until we are ready to proceed with the new building, since the two buildings will share a common HVAC system and the arts library will occupy connected space in both buildings.

In the late 1990s we developed a plan for comprehensive renovations in the Chapel and York area—involving the professional schools of art and architecture and drama, the Art Gallery and the British Art Center, the art history department, the arts library, and the University Theatre, as well as other spaces that are used for undergraduate arts. Many parts of that plan have been carried out. The art school moved to Green Hall, on Chapel between York and Park streets. We also added an experimental black-box theater for the drama school there. The British Art Center completed a significant renovation. It’s in beautiful condition now.

Y: And the drama school wants a new theater.

L: That’s right. When James Bundy, the new dean, came in, he said that the church on Chapel Street—while charming and funky—is not the best facility for a nationally prominent repertory company, or for training actors, directors, technicians, and designers. It doesn’t have the fly space that the technical people should be trained on, let alone enough stage space for the actors and directors. So we’ve concluded we need a major new performance space.

Y: How about music?

L: The music school has its own very ambitious plan to renovate all the music facilities. We built the music library in Sterling, we renovated Sprague Hall, and Leigh Hall is under renovation right now. The next steps are Stoeckel Hall, to accommodate the department of music, and Hendrie Hall, to be shared by the music school and undergraduate performance groups such as the Glee Club and the Yale Band.

And of course our eventual hope is to renovate Woolsey Hall—though this would be hugely expensive. Anybody who’s sat sweltering in the balcony on a cold winter evening or a hot summer day recognizes that the heating and cooling system there needs to be completely redone. And this is a place that has one of the world’s great organs. The acoustics today are ideal for the organ, but you have to make sure that the acoustics also are satisfactory for spoken words and for orchestral music. This is a major challenge. It will be one of the great acoustical projects of the 21st century.

Y: What’s the time frame for all this?

L: The entire plan—covering the Chapel-York district and the music area with the exception of Woolsey Hall—is anticipated in our ten-year capital budget. But it will require substantial fund-raising to be completed during that period.

Y: Now here’s another funding issue for the arts: tuition waivers and stipends for the graduate students. Recently I met a 2004 graduate from the art school who complained that Yale gives very little financial assistance to its art school students. I asked why he chose Yale, since he said he could have gone debt-free elsewhere, and he said, “Because I had to. If you want to break into the New York art scene, Yale is the place to go. But now I have an enormous amount of debt.” He was very bitter about it.

L: This issue is a very deep concern. It’s absolutely clear that raising funds for greater financial aid in the arts schools is a big priority—of equal importance to pushing ahead with these facilities. So in the coming capital campaign we are going to seek funds for both needs.

Y: When you add the financial aid issue to the facilities renovations, what is the total cost?

L: It’s a big number. The total price tag on facilities will be in excess of $300 million. We would like to see the endowments of each of the arts schools go up by at least $10 million to allow an increase in financial aid. It would be even better to raise $20 to $30 million for each school.

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