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Reading Room Summer 2021
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Thomas Patch, The Golden Asses
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Welcome
As of May 16, 2022, Yale University Library special collections reading rooms are open to all researchers who are fully vaccinated and boosted, when eligible.
Non-Yale researchers are required to register in the Yale Library special collections system, complete the University vaccine attestation process in advance of their visit, and show a copy of their approval email for admission to the library on the day of their visit.
In addition, international researchers arriving from overseas must also adhere to the Yale travel requirements for visitors from other countries (SEE U.S. Restrictions and Requirements for International Travel under the Yale Covid 19 Travel Policy https://covid19.yale.edu/travel-policy)
The Lewis Walpole Library is a research center for eighteenth-century studies and an essential resource for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. Its collections include important holdings of eighteenth-century British prints, drawings, manuscripts, rare books, paintings, and decorative arts. Given to Yale by Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis (1895-1979) and Annie Burr Lewis (1902-1959), the Lewis Walpole Library is located in Farmington, Connecticut, in several eighteenth-century buildings on a fourteen-acre campus. The Lewis Walpole Library is a department of Yale University Library and open to researchers.
At the library....
The Twenty-Fifth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture
Thursday, October 13, 2022 5:30 PM
What are dogs doing in eighteenth-century British art?
Thomas W. Laqueur
Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus,
University of California, Berkeley.
Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall
1080 Chapel Street, New Haven
Prof. Laqueur will be speaking about the ways in which dogs mediate human sociability and more specifically about how they function formally in art to bind together the various elements– human and material– of an image. He will discuss images of dogs in the studies of scholars, like portrait of Walpole and his dog in the Library at Strawberry Hill, and move on to a discussion of the various contexts in which it might be understood: from the paintings of Carpaccio and Rubens to the eighteenth century and beyond; dogs in eighteenth century British art from Hogarth’s “Self Portrait” to the many family scenes of the period; and then more generally dogs in art as they constitute part of a symbolic system– world making and critical in our social cognition. A short coda on interpreting Balak, the most famous dog in Hebrew literature, in the Isreali Nobel Prize winning novelist Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s greatest novel–Only Yesterday– will get us back to Walpole in his study and the question the lecture poses: what are all those dogs doing in Eighteenth Century British art?
The library is thrilled to announce the opening of its new exhibition, “Knight Errant of the Distressed”: Horace Walpole and Philanthropy in Eighteenth-Century London, curated by Dr. Andrew Rudd, Senior Lecturer, English Department, University of Exeter. This exhibition uses images, manuscripts, artefacts and extracts from publications and correspondence to situate Walpole within the burgeoning philanthropic culture of his age. It reveals Walpole’s secret giving to prisoners and other good causes and examine the principles which underlay his philanthropy. A main aim of the exhibition is to stimulate discussion about philanthropy today.
The exhibition opens Wednesday, May 11 and is open to the public every Wednesday from 2-4:30 PM, no appointment needed.
And for those unable to visit in person, you can view the online version of the exhibit here: https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/knighterrant/page/intro
*Please be aware there are still Covid Protocols in place for visitors. Requirements for visiting the exhibition gallery can be found on our Exhibitions page.
