Photos: Richard Capsole
A view of the museum’s roof with new skylight domes and original louvres.
New Haven, CT’s, Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), home to the largest collection of British art outside the UK, reopened in March 2025 after a three-year renovation and a two-year closure. The institution includes a vast collection of 35,000 rare books and manuscripts dating back to the 15th century, 20,000 drawings and watercolors, 2,000 paintings, 250 sculptures, and more works, as well as the building’s updated lighting design.
The $16.5 million conservation project, upholding the historic aesthetic created by American architect Louis I. Kahn and original lighting design by American designer Richard Kelly, now features a new liquid-membrane roof with stronger domes to replace more than 200 acrylic skylights, laylight cassettes with removable films to diffuse sunlight, and an LED system—which required the retrofitting of more than 600 fixtures and the replacement of nearly 7,000 linear ft of halogen track lighting. The detailed renovation is the result of collaboration from an internal team within the YCBA as well as a slew of the museum’s partners.
Colleagues from art conservation, building conservation, communications, curatorial, installation, external affairs, registrar, visitor services, and security and operations worked in tandem to plan for the update of the modernist-designed building constructed in 1977. To aid the internal team through the initial analyses of energy reduction and light mitigation, fabrication, and installation of new fixtures, a squad of external partners stepped in, bringing the house of priceless works from the past into the 21st century.
A mid-project view of the skylights without cassettes but with original light fixtures.
“The Center has benefited from the expertise and dedication of C-White Electric; EwingCole; Grand Light; Knight Architecture, LLC; Lighting Services, Inc. (LSI); Southport Engineering Associates; and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., as well as Deborah Berke and numerous other collaborations,” explained YCBA’s Head of Museum Initiatives and Building Conservation Dana Greenidge. For example, “We worked with EwingCole, a nationally recognized architecture, engineering, and interior design firm to assess options for light mitigation to design an insert for our light-diffusing laylight cassette system,” continued Greenidge. “They also helped us identify a lighting manufacturer to replicate the original track and fixtures: LSI.”
Another player on the team, Connecticut-based Knight Architecture, was essential in thinking through the lighting design with LSI and worked with Southport Engineering Associates to develop a new track system. “Deborah Berke and George Knight provided consultation on design and scale of the new fixtures, advising on decisions about how to maintain Kahn’s original aesthetic,” explained Greenidge. Additionally, Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. “helped structurally develop the light track and designed a 100% pull-test to ensure the track was safely supported by the connection boxes adhered to the concrete.”
A mid-renovation image of illumination from skylights before the diffusing cassettes were placed.
Kahn’s blueprint for the YCBA included 224 acrylic skylights, centering the museum guest experience not only around art but also the interplay of light and structure. A combination of external and internal improvements ensured the unique experience was preserved along with the longevity of the museum’s structure and internal contents.
The roof, which was last worked on in 1998, now comprises four layers: two plies of fiberglass-reinforced SBS-modified bitumen (a lightweight, flexible roofing option made of rubber and asphalt) set in adhesives atop existing two-ply SBS-modified bitumen insulated roofing assembly. To finish the job “penetrations and other transitions were flashed with a reinforced liquid membrane that conforms to the exact substrate contours at the site,” said Greenidge. This external addition “maximizes the puncture and tear resistance performance of the overall roof system.”
A closeup view of the new cassette system.
The skylights, now made with more resilient polycarbonate domes in the same shapes of their previous acrylic iterations, ensure that galleries and guests benefit from as much natural light as possible—a key part of Kahn’s original vision. “Compared with many other museum renovations, the most remarkable aspect of our project is that when the Center [reopened], it [looked] almost exactly the same,” said Greenidge. “Our focus was not on making major, recognizable changes, but preserving and renewing our existing spaces. While most visitors may not notice the nuances…they will experience the beauty of encountering [the] collection as Kahn intended for it to be seen, within elegant skylight galleries restored to their original vitality and luster.”
New skylight domes above the entrance court.
Beneath the skylights lie a total of 832 acrylic laylight cassettes that diffuse sunlight, protect artwork on display, and change how guests may view the work as the day goes on. However, the team took the design one step further. “Working with EwingCole’s Cultural Projects and Lighting teams, the Center performed a thorough analysis before embarking on a plan to mitigate the collection’s exposure to sunlight to better align with current art conservation standards,” explained Greenidge. “Rather than placing a tinted film directly on the new skylights or the newly fabricated cassettes, a film-treated acrylic panel was designed to fit within each new cassette’s system, resulting in a roughly 30% reduction of daylight. The addition of the insert is in line with the Center’s building conservation ethos as it can be easily adjusted or removed entirely to restore the daylight to its original condition.”
Though one could say the Center revolves around the Sun in many ways, it is also true that electric light plays a key role in the new iteration of this free-to-the-public museum, as it does in many exhibition spaces. “Converting our lighting from the original halogen lamps to LED was not as simple as replacing lightbulbs. In order to retain the building’s aesthetic while incorporating the new technology, we had to design a whole new lighting system,” said Greenidge. The new system would need to remain compatible with existing wiring and mirror the design of the original track lighting. To achieve this, designers implemented Xicato LED Engines with high CRI and 10-year warranties for 611 retrofits, as well as 6,817 linear ft of track and 2,515 new light fixtures by LSI. An ETC control system to handle the entire institution’s illumination, with programs made in collaboration with the YCBA installation department to focus on specific settings for exhibition spaces, was installed by Supertech, Inc.
“Our 2023–2025 conservation project is the most recent phase in our ongoing stewardship of the building,” said Greenidge. “The project, like those before it, builds upon decades of research on the history of the design, construction, and renovation of the museum’s landmark building, which was published in 2011 as Louis Kahn and the Yale Center for British Art: A Conservation Plan by Peter Inskip and Stephen Gee, in association with Constance Clement, former deputy director of the museum. As with previous projects, the recent work was guided by the ethos and principals outlined in the [text].”
To see the museum in it’s newest form, and for more information, visit https://britishart.yale.edu/.
THE DESIGN TEAM | Deborah Berke, Yale School of Architecture, served as a lighting consultant on the project.
C-White Electric served as the electrical contractor.
EwingCole served as the project’s electrical and lighting consultant.
Grand Light provided lighting restoration for the project.
Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Yale University provided lighting analysis for the project.
Knight Architecture served as the project’s building conservation project architect and as a lighting consultant.
Lighting Services, Inc., Member IES, served as lighting designer, engineer, and manufacturer for the project.
Modern Plastics served as cassette fabricator for the project.
Southport Engineering Associates served as a consultant and electrical engineer for the project.
Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. served as a lighting consultant and structural engineer for the project.