New Haven, Connecticut Museums

New Haven, Connecticut, is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut, and is part of the New York metropolitan area.

Founded in 1638 by English Puritans, New Haven is the home of Yale University. The university is an integral part of the city’s economy, being New Haven’s biggest employer.

The city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873 when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has many well-established theatres, museums, and music venues.

Virtual Tour of the Museums in New Haven, Connecticut

• Yale University Art Gallery
• Peabody Museum of Natural History
• New Haven Museum and Historical Society
• Yale Center for British Art

Highlights Tour of the Museums in New Haven, Connecticut

Yale University Art Gallery

The Yale University Art Gallery houses a significant collection of art in several buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

The gallery has a strong emphasis on early Italian painting, African sculpture, and modern art.

Peabody Museum of Natural History

The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is one of the oldest university natural history museums in the world. It was founded in 1866 and moved to its current location in 1925.

The Peabody Museum is attached to the Kline Geology Laboratory and the Class of 1954 Environmental Sciences Center and has a field station at the Long Island Sound.

The museum also owns Horse Island in the Thimble Islands, which is used for experiments. The Environmental Science Center hosts approximately one-half of the museum’s 13 million specimens.

The museum also displays the first full-scale reproduction of a Torosaurus. The 3 m (9 ft) tall, 7 m (21 ft) long, 3.33 metric ton (7,350 lb) statue was sculpted in clay and cast in bronze, and set on a tall granite base. Its reproduction is based on the fossilized skin impressions left by a Chasmosaurus, a closely related ceratopsid.

New Haven Museum and Historical Society

The New Haven Museum and Historical Society was founded in 1862 for the purposes of preserving and presenting the region’s history. The museum’s collection includes art, photography, furniture, and other artifacts from New Haven’s history.

The Museum features exhibitions on local art, and decorative arts, with collections associated with Eli Whitney, Winchester, Yale, East Rock, and Noah Webster.

The Museum’s Library contains manuscript and archival holdings from the first settlement to the present. The collection includes rare books, the manuscript collections, including personal papers, business, and institutional records, court and municipal documents, maps, architectural drawings, and photographs.

The library contains 30,000 printed titles including monographs and pamphlets that include genealogical materials, town records, passenger arrival lists, Federal census schedules for New Haven County, and New Haven city directories from 1840.

Yale Center for British Art

The Yale Center for British Art at Yale University houses the most extensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom.

The collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, rare books, and manuscripts reflects the development of British art and culture starting from the Elizabethan period.

The Center is based in a facility with matte steel and reflective glass for the exterior, and the interior is made of travertine marble, white oak, and Belgian linen.

The building’s design and sky-lit rooms combine to provide an environment where the art can be viewed in diffused natural light.

The collection consists of nearly 2,000 paintings and 200 sculptures, with an emphasis on the period between William Hogarth’s birth (1697) to J. M. W. Turner’s death (1851).

The collection also has works by artists from Europe and North America who lived and worked in Britain.