Yale Centre For British Art (Yale University), New Haven, CT

The Yale Center for British Art was established in 1966 when Paul Mellon donated his British art collection to Yale University along with funds for a building and endowment. Mellon, son of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, developed his passion for British culture through childhood summers with his English mother's family and studies at Cambridge. He purchased his first British painting in 1936, a work by George Stubbs whose reputation his collecting helped revive.

The museum opened in 1977 in Louis Kahn's final building, located across from his first major commission, the Yale Art Gallery. The collection holds nearly 2,000 paintings and the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. John Constable, John Martin, and Thomas Gainsborough represent Romanticism and Rococo elegance. William Hogarth, William Blake, and Edward Burne-Jones showcase British painting from satire to the Pre-Raphaelites.