NEW HAVEN, CT (August 12, 2024) — The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and the Yale Peabody Museum will present a two-part public art project by Los Angeles–based interdisciplinary artist Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964). This new commission, titled Composition in Black and Brown, features a billboard on Interstate 95 North in West Haven, CT, on view from August 12 through November 3, 2024, and a site-specific artwork in the windows of the YCBA’s Lower Court, on view from August to December 2024.
Emerging from Gonzales-Day’s interactions with the collections of both the YCBA and the Peabody, Composition in Black and Brown prompts questions about the historical constructions of race and the limits of representation.
“Gonzales-Day uses the billboard and the YCBA’s window space as a canvas for his creativity, bringing his subjects to the streets while sparking important conversations about a wide range of contemporary issues,” said Martina Droth, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the YCBA. “Through the medium of photography, the artist literally reframes his subjects as portraits and raises questions of how sitters are treated and who is included or excluded in the narrative.”
“Ken Gonzales-Day’s work is a perfect opportunity to partner with the Yale Center for British Art to look at our collections in conversation with one another,” added Kailen Rogers, Associate Director of Exhibitions at the Peabody. “Ken works closely with museums to investigate the materials that they hold, examining who is represented and who is telling those stories. He engages with complex, often troubled, histories in a way that helps museums find a path forward. This project also encapsulates the Peabody’s new approaches to community collaborations, to looking at our collections in a different way, and to finding new avenues for people to connect.”
For more than a decade, as part of his ongoing series Profiled (2008–), Gonzales-Day has photographed statues and portrait busts in museum collections worldwide to address the construction of race in these selective environments. In summer 2023, he was a visiting artist at the YCBA. While in New Haven, he studied and photographed sculptures in the collections of both the YCBA and the Peabody. After his residency, the museums commissioned Gonzales-Day to create a public artwork.
The new commission foregrounds Bust of a Man (1758), a portrait of an unknown Black sitter in the YCBA’s collection, and Stone Statue of a Young Man (1350–1521), a Mexica statue in the Peabody’s collection. Many questions surround both works. Gonzales-Day chose these figures because of their singularity. Unlike other known examples from its period, the Mexica male is depicted in the nude; Bust of a Man is unusual for its time in that its subject is Black. (Essays on Bust of a Man and Stone Statue of a Young Man, commissioned on the occasion of Gonzales-Day’s project, examine their respective histories.)
The Black and Mexica figures are flanked by busts in white marble dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, rendered in a neoclassical style that highlights their sitters’ status. The presence of these white European figures underscores the racialized contexts in which the central figures have historically been understood.
“In a sense,” Gonzalez-Day said, “Composition in Black and Brown is the culmination of many histories. It is my hope that the display will engender new readings and allow viewers to consider some of the most fundamental of questions: Who is looking? And who is being seen?”
Location
Composition in Black and Brown I
On view August 12 through November 3, 2024
A billboard located on Interstate 95 North in West Haven, CT
Composition in Black and Brown II
On view from August through December 2024
A site-specific vinyl artwork in the Lower Court windows of the YCBA, adjacent to the courtyard of Harvest Wine Bar and Restaurant at 1104 Chapel Street in New Haven.
Related Program
Artists in Conversation: Ken Gonzales-Day
Thursday, September 12, 2024, 4–5 pm
Yale Center for British Art Lower Court, 1104 Chapel Street, New Haven
Ken Gonzales-Day will be in conversation with Martina Droth, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, YCBA.
About Ken Gonzales-Day
Born in Los Angeles in 1964, Ken Gonzales-Day is a queer, Chicanx, Latine/x interdisciplinary artist and educator of mixed ancestry who has transformed the understanding of racialized violence in the United States. His widely exhibited photographic series Erased Lynching (2002–) and his book Lynching in the West, 1850–1935 (Duke University Press, 2006) have raised awareness of the lynching of Asians, Latinos, Indigenous Americans, and Black Americans in California and helped to situate both anti-immigration movements and acts of collective violence within larger discussions of racism, policing, and justice.
His ongoing photographic series Profiled (2008–) addresses questions of racial bias in museum environments. Gonzales-Day has brought this project not only to the YCBA and the Peabody but also to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Chicago’s Field Museum, the Trocadero Museum in Paris, the archive of the 1915–16 California-Panama Exposition in San Diego’s Balboa Park, and many others.
Gonzales-Day currently holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Art at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. He is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles and serves on the board of directors of LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions).
About the Yale Center for British Art
The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) houses the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom, encompassing works from the fifteenth century to the present in a range of media. The museum offers a vibrant, year-round program of events and exhibitions in person and online. Presented to the university by collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class of 1929), the museum opened to the public in 1977. The YCBA is currently closed for a major building conservation project and will reopen to the public in spring 2025. Connect on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and X @yalebritishart.
About the Yale Peabody Museum
Founded in 1866, the Yale Peabody Museum is one of the world’s oldest and largest university museums of its kind. The museum recently completed a four-year-long renovation project, offering 50 percent more gallery space, classroom and research facilities, and dynamic fossil mounts reflecting the latest scientific knowledge. Home to more than fourteen million objects and specimens across ten distinct collections, the museum preserves and displays more than four billion years of Earth and human history. It has long served as a gateway to science for the greater New Haven community and beyond, hosting exhibitions and public programs that connect tens of thousands of visitors each year with the latest research occurring at Yale and around the world. Connect on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X @yalepeabodymuseum.
Press Contacts
Kristin Dwyer
Yale Center for British Art
kristin.dwyer@yale.edu
203 432 2856
Steven Scarpa
Yale Peabody Museum
steven.scarpa@yale.edu
203 432 8837
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