Community Calendar

This exhibition focuses on more than 60 recent works by photographer James Welling (American, born 1951). From the artist’s Cento and Personae series, these photographs of ancient sites in Italy and Greece, as well as antiquities in museums around the world, underwent digital and painterly alteration to achieve transformative effects. The photographs will be exhibited alongside a selection from the Museum’s extensive collection of historic plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture.
As Welling explains, he is interested in “reanimating” the men and women of the ancient past through these works and connecting them to our own time in a fresh way through his innovative combination of photography and painting. Visitors to the exhibition will feel their curiosity piqued by his elusive and often haunting evocations of the ancient Mediterranean world.

James Welling, Fragment of a gold leaf wreath, 2020, oil pigment, oil pastel, and wax over electrostatic print on polypropylene substrate. Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects. © James Welling

Course description:

College is a crucial institution in which our society works through its expectations for young people. This course explores the purposes of college education through the first great book on the philosophy of education, Plato’s Republic. We read The Republic in conversation with other thinkers including Aristotle, Confucius, John Stuart Mill, Virginia Woolf, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. For the 325th anniversary of Yale’s founding, we also explore the changing conception of college education at Yale over the centuries and read some of the college’s and the university’s key founding documents. Themes include the development of personal character, participation in a community, preparation for citizenship, and conversation with others on intellectual matters. We also explore some of the social and economic functions of college education.

The 2026 DeVane Lecture series will be led by Pericles Lewis, Dean of Yale College and Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature

The class is free and open to the public and will run on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30 to 3:20 p.m., from September 2 to December 9, 2026.

Open to All, With Associate Curator Kaitlin Halloran

October 16, 3 PM - 4 PM

Free for Members | $10 Guests of Member | $15 for Resident Benefits PassHolders | $30 Adults | Free for Students & Children

Join us for a special tour of Tony Bechara: An Artist of Many Worlds, led by Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.

Advance registration is recommended. Limited spaces will be available at the door.

About the Exhibition
Tony Bechara: An Artist of Many Worlds is the first-ever comprehensive survey of Puerto Rican artist Tony Bechara, including works from his later years and exploring his career-long dedication to color theory and abstraction. Born in Puerto Rico and based in New York City, Bechara (1942–2025) drew on his bilingual and bicultural upbringing, his studies in law and international relations, his long stays in Europe and the Hamptons, and his characteristic, enduring curiosity to become a man of many worlds—seeking light and illumination in far corners of the globe and across its diverse cultures.

Eight showings across six dates, October 16-24. Full schedule below.

Inside the Blake Street Center, A Broken Umbrella Theatre stages New Haven in 1776 — Patriots, Loyalists, and the people caught between them. Audiences move from room to room through roughly 30 minutes of a new work still being developed, a first draft shown on purpose ahead of a fuller production in 2027.

SCHEDULE (no performances October 19-21):
Friday, October 16 — 7:30 PM
Saturday, October 17 — 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM
Sunday, October 18 — 2:00 PM
Thursday, October 22 — 7:30 PM
Friday, October 23 — 7:30 PM
Saturday, October 24 — 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM

Entry is staggered in small groups — reserve a specific time. Admission is pay what you can, with a suggested donation of $17.76; tickets are available at any price point. All ages welcome; 10 and up recommended, since audiences stand and move from room to room. Elevator access, seating, and mobility accommodations are available. Capacity is limited and advance reservations are recommended.

Chicago, 1927. Tensions and temperatures rise during a blistering recording session as the legendary “Mother of the Blues,” Ma Rainey, and her ambitious trumpeter, Levee, clash over control of her music, exposing the emotional and economic exploitation Black artists faced in America. An exploration of dreams deferred, cultural identity, and the power of the blues, August Wilson’s electrifying masterpiece, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, returns in a brand-new production more than 40 years after it first raised the roof of the American theater in its world premiere at Yale Rep.

"Virtuosic playing and charming, flamboyant showmanship" —Chicago Reader

It is hard to resist the infectious energy of a mariachi band! The historic tradition of mariachi music has its roots of origin in cities such as Guadalajara and Mexico City. As the ever-evolving genre’s influence spread, it reached Chicago and birthed the Mariachi Herencia de México.

This energetic, virtuosic Latin Grammy-nominated group has issued chart-topping albums and performed across the North American continent. The young band is returning to the Quick Center following a very popular performance in fall 2022. Experience an electrifying night of Mexican music and culture.

"This is mariachi music at its most sophisticated and modernistic." —Jonathan Clark, Mariachi Historian

Keeping sharp and staying active is vital for older adults.

The AFA Barbara Rabinowitz Center offers free, dementia-friendly activities for Long Island seniors every weekday in Amityville.

The Center’s free programs help seniors strengthen their brains, be creative, and socialize.

Programs include arts & crafts, music, games, chair yoga, dance, and movement.

Visit afalongisland.org or call 631-223-4000 to learn more.

Open Studios New Haven returns to the city with a bang! This year, more than two dozen locations across New Haven, Westville, and West Haven will open their doors (and studios) in a month-long extravaganza of events! Open Studios New Haven (OSNHV) runs October 1 to November 1, with an exciting line-up of weekend events including: Opening Weekend (Oct 1- 4), Downtown Weekend (Oct 10 - 11), Erector Square/Marlin Works Weekend (Oct 17 -18), Westville Weekend (Oct 24 - 25), and a Giant Puppet Parade in Westville’s Edgewood Park on November 1 (11am). With support from the City of New Haven, the Town Green District, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, you can meet local artists, visit their studios, learn about the creative process, and to purchase unique artwork, jewelry, and handicrafts ahead of the holiday season! Free and open to everyone. Get a sneak peek at OSNHV with “Glorious Index: Small Works by Open Studios Artists,” at The Gallery Upstairs at the Institute Library (Opening Reception, Thursday, October 1, 5-7pm). Discover all of the locations, addresses, and events on printed maps available throughout the city, and at OpenStudiosNHV.org.

The Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss presents Field Notes, an exhibition of works by contemporary artist Eve Biddle, curated by Terri Moore.

Drawing on the symbolism of snakes as signs of life and fertility and referencing archaeological artifacts across time, Biddle's work explores the ways memory, perception, and presence transform our understanding of the natural world. Her images follow a meandering path, reminding us that neither history nor our own lives move in straight lines. Nature appears ambiguously alive or dead, abstracted and literal at once.

Rather than documenting a specific place, Biddle reshapes the landscape genre through layering, translation, and physical intervention. The resulting works invite viewers to consider the connections between nature, memory, time, and transformation.

Upcoming Events

Artist Talk
Thursday, September 17 | 7:00–7:45 p.m.
Join Eve Biddle for a conversation about her work and the ideas behind Field Notes.

Artist Reception
Saturday, September 19 | 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Celebrate the exhibition and meet artist Eve Biddle at the Tremaine Gallery.

The exhibition and events are free and open to the public.

Field Notes remains on view through October 18.

The Tremaine Art Gallery is located at 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville, CT, and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. The Gallery is closed on Mondays.

This exhibition explores the enduring fascination with ancient Egyptian art and culture (dubbed “Egyptomania” by 19th-century Europeans) through a selection of paintings, prints, photographs, and decorative art from the early 19th century to the present day.

These objects, from the humble to the refined, from the shamelessly commercial to the Afrofuturist, represent the range of artistic responses to – and misconceptions about – ancient Egyptian visual culture.

Paradoxically, this enthusiasm for Egyptian symbols and motifs contributed to the erasure of the ancient Egyptian people themselves, as popular memory exoticized their beliefs and customs. The exhibition will examine how these objects reflect the phenomenon of “Egyptomania” over the last two centuries and will position their oversimplified or stereotypical narratives in conversation with current archaeological understandings of ancient Egyptian culture.