The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) and the Yale Peabody Museum present Ken Gonzales-Day: Composition in Black and Brown, a public art project in two parts.
Composition in Black and Brown I is a billboard on view from August 12 through October 27, 2024, on Interstate 95 North in West Haven, CT.
Composition in Black and Brown II is a vinyl artwork on view from August through December 2024 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, CT.
In the summer of 2023, Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964) was a visiting artist at the Yale Center for British Art. During his time in New Haven, he researched and photographed portrait busts and other sculptures in the collections of both the YCBA and the Yale Peabody Museum. The two museums then commissioned Gonzales-Day to create a public artwork. The result is Composition in Black and Brown (2024), an image that prompts questions about the historical constructions of race and the limits of representation.
According to the artist, this project “seeks to foreground questions of representation, encourage scholarship, embrace complex collaborative actions, invite institutional self-reflection, consider the contributions of individuals and groups in developing new approaches to historical looking, and embrace the visual arts’ ability to transform the world around and within us, for those who strive to apply the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion in pursuit of social justice.”