As a free public museum, the Yale Center for British Art aims to promote the awareness, study, and enjoyment of its collection of British art. The information below aims to help scholars, students, and the general public learn more about using the museum’s physical and digital collections.
Reference Library
The Reference Library collections house more than 40,000 titles and 120 current periodicals devoted to British art, artists, and culture from the fifteenth century to the present. The Photo Archives, located within the Reference Library, is a study collection of almost 150,000 photographic reproductions of British works of art from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century.
Borrowing Objects
The Yale Center for British Art lends objects from its collection to other institutions in furtherance of its mission to serve a national and international audience; support scholarship and appreciation of British art; and the university’s broader mission to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.
Britain in the World installation, fourth-floor galleries, Yale Center for British Art, photo by Richard Caspole
Data Sharing
The YCBA is committed to using technology to advance the study of its collections by providing access to its holdings online to as broad a public as possible. Collections data is shared on the web in human- and machine-readable formats. The human-readable format allows users to search and view metadata and images via a Collection Search as well as download images of objects in the public domain.
Using Images
Thousands of images of works in the museum's collection believed to be in the public domain are available for free through the museum's online collection. Under Yale University’s Open Access Policy, anyone may use the museum's open access material without further application, authorization, or fees due to the museum or to Yale.
George Stubbs, Brown and White Norfolk or Water Spaniel (detail), 1778
