School Notes: School of Art
July/August 2021

New dean appointed

Yale president Peter Salovey has appointed Kymberly Pinder ’95PhD, an internationally recognized scholar of race, representation, and murals, as the next Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art. Pinder’s work is studied widely in art history curricula across the country and has fostered new avenues of inquiry in her field. Her unique approach to her scholarship and practice as a curator demonstrates to students the importance of community engagement in the arts. Pinder’s appointment became effective on July 1. 

Yale Center for British Art acquires first work by a School of Art alumna

In April, the Yale Center for British Art announced the acquisition of a large-scale photograph by An-My Lê, a Yale School of Art alumna who earned her MFA in photography in 1993. Fragment II: Restoration of J. M. W. Turner’s Port Ruysdael, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 2018 is the first work by a Yale School of Art alumna to enter the center’s permanent collection.

The 40-by-56-1/2-inch photograph comes from Lê’s series Silent General, and captures a behind-the-scenes image of a painting by J. M. W. Turner—also in the Center’s collection—while it was being restored. The work is currently on tour in An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain, the first comprehensive survey of Lê’s work featuring more than 100 images from a selection of the artist’s major series.