In April of 2026, I officially became a guide at the Yale University Art Gallery. I had trained for six months, written multiple papers, and practiced my tour too many times. In the five months since then, I’ve given more than 20 public tours of the gallery. During the hour-long tours, guides and visitors discuss art from a variety of departments, spanning continents and centuries. Each tour is completely personalized; guides choose and research four objects during two semesters. The tour themes, tying the four objects together, range from “traveling” to “morality.”
My favorite part of the program is holding conversations: though I may begin them, the visitors carry them on. The theme of my tour is “crowds,” and naturally, I love having large groups of visitors, especially when they take the conversation into their own hands. I hope visitors remain engaged with the gallery, eager to learn more even after the tour concludes. I talked to four of my fellow guides about their best experiences and what they’ve learned.
Jiayang’s tour theme: Balance
Clara Holahan: How long have you been a guide for?
Jiayang Jin: I joined the program as a new gallery guide at the start of 2024. I did one year of training. I’ve been leading tours for about a year and a half.
CH: We’re looking at Herman Miller’s Stacking Chair. How did you choose this piece for your tour?
JJ: This is the third object on my tour, and at this point, I had already decided that my theme was going to be “balance.” I was looking for a third object, and as a gallery guide, I felt, with my object selection, an obligation to pick things a typical museum visitor might not stop at. The YUAG has a really strong collection of decorative arts, particularly American decorative arts. I cannot remember the moment I first laid eyes on this object, but the color is so fabulous, and the shape is also so fabulous; it does stand out to me in this entire room. I did a little bit more research on it, and I knew that this was the piece that I wanted.
CH: Since you began presenting this object, how has your view of it changed, and what have you learned about it from leading conversations?
JJ: The beauty of the Gallery Guides program is that everybody brings their own backgrounds and lives experiences with them to the tour. I often ask at the start, for people to throw out words that come to mind, just free associate. People are very intuitive, they know instantaneously that it’s plastic. Another anecdote I think is beautiful was when I once had an elementary school teacher on my tour, and she said that it really reminded her of the chairs in her elementary school classrooms, particularly the color.
CH: What tactics do you use to encourage discussion during tours?
JJ: Physical activities are always fun. After I introduce Thomas Dewing’s Summer, I ask for volunteers to get up and imitate the main figures that they see in front of them. And then I ask them to go down the line and share a little bit about how they’re feeling as they’re holding the pose. Then I ask them to just follow what their body is telling them and move however they feel. It’s very fun to see people kind of awkwardly twirling around one another. At this chair, I also ask people to guess the price it cost in 1970. There is a right answer which I reveal eventually (it’s $75), but I think it’s such an accessible and fun question because everyone can speculate on how much something costs. I always ask people to elaborate on their guesses, and their explanations are always insightful.
Elspeth’s tour theme: Identity Tourism
Clara Holahan: How long have you been a guide for?
Elspeth Yeh: I was onboarded as a gallery guide last fall, in my sophomore year. I completed my training in April of this year, and I’ve been giving gallery guide tours for the past three months.
CH: We’re looking at Edward Hopper’s Rooms for Tourists. How did you choose this piece?
EY: I remember that our first gallery guide curator talk was with Mark Mitchell, the curator of American Painting and Sculpture, and he brought us up here to look at the other Hopper, Western Motel. I just remember turning around and seeing this painting, and thinking to myself, that looks like Cape Cod. I looked up Rooms for Tourists, and it is a painting of Provincetown. For the past three summers, I’ve been going to Provincetown with friends on a yearly vacation because my friend has an apartment there. I’m also from Massachusetts. So I looked at this painting, and I immediately felt like I was home, even though I was in New Haven. I’ve always felt so comforted by this piece. I’ve always felt it to be warm. And yet, a lot of people’s first reaction is that it’s gloomy, or that it’s sad, or spooky, and I find it so fascinating that Hopper can encapsulate such different emotional reactions in a single painting. I’ve had such a fun time exploring that tension and that liminality when talking about this piece on my tour.
CH: What tactics do you use to encourage discussion on tours?
EY: One of my favorite things to do, after I draw out that this is a hotel, I’ll ask visitors, “Who traveled to get here to New Haven today?” Oftentimes someone on your tour has traveled very far to get to New Haven. I ask, “How has this experience of travel been making you feel?” It’s so beautiful to learn from where these people come from. But I also love when they say, “I’m so stressed. I have to pack, the plane was delayed.” I’ll ask, “Where can we find anxiety in this painting? Where can we find tiredness in this painting? Where can we find excitement in this painting?” People talk about travel being exciting. It’s fun to then poke out the various emotions present in this piece through the lens of an experience that’s very tangible.
CH: What is a memory from gallery guides that is important to you?
EY: I remember when I first presented this piece. It was the first piece I chose, it was my first object presentation. And I finished it, and I sat down to do a feedback circle. Feedback is central to the gallery guides program. Irene said to me, “You sparkled up there.” Sparkle is just such a beautiful, tangible description. At the end of the day, at gallery guides, even though we’re trying to help each other learn and grow, we’re all so kind and supportive of each other.
Myra’s tour theme: Arts in Motion
Clara Holahan: How long have you been a guide for?
Myra Kamal: This is my fourth year in the program.
CH: We’re looking at Salvador Dali’s The Free Inclination of Desire. How do you encourage conversation during tours, especially at such a surreal piece?
MK: Having good questions prepared that people want to answer. But also, being willing to hand over the reins to the community. It’s really fun when people start bouncing off each other and start adding to each other’s interpretations. That’s when I really feel like I’ve done a good job, when people start to take over the conversation for themselves, and they start building relationships amongst each other.
CH: Can you tell me about a memory from gallery guides that is important to you?
MK: We came up to this painting, The Free Inclination of Desire, and people were so excited to participate because it’s so abstract. There was a little girl on this tour and I asked a question: “What does the ground look like to you?” She said it looked like the sidewalk outside her house after the rain washes the chalk away. The group thought this was such a brilliant description. Dali’s surrealist artwork is really open to interpretation, so you get a lot of fun and random answers that create narratives for great discussion.
CH: How has the gallery guide program allowed you to connect with the world outside of Yale?
MK: I felt like the Gallery Guide program has always been so important to me since my first year because it really situated me in the context of New Haven. We’re here for the New Haven community. So that has been a great focus for me in this program. It is really fun to hear people’s own memories or perspectives or where they’re coming from. On my recent tour, I had two people come up to me and say they remembered me from two years ago when they came. It was really cool to see people coming back and bringing back new experiences from their life far away from the gallery and then bringing that back to a tour again. I would also really encourage the undergrad community to come to highlights tours over the weekends if they’re free. These tours are also for them, and it would be lovely to have a blended community of New Haven visitors and Yale students.
Ellison’s tour theme: Performance
Clara Holahan: How long have you been a guide for?
Ellison Dunn: This is my third year, and this is my first year as head guide.
CH: We’re sitting at Emile-Antoine Bourdelle’s Beethoven with Two Hands. How did you pick this piece for your tour?
ED: This was the third object that I chose. I had already established my theme as performance, and so I was looking for a way to ground the theme in a very explicit way, because my first object was a little bit more abstractly related to the theme of performance. I like when traditional genres or styles are subverted. So here we have a portrait bust, but it is very highly stylized and expressive. It’s not quite trying to replicate life, but rather Beethoven’s head is emerging out of this rock in a very stylistic way.
CH: How do you encourage conversation during tours?
ED: I have a very different approach for each object. At this stop, I guide visitors through the senses. Since Beethoven was a musician, I focus a lot on hearing, and I play some music while they look for a minute or two. And then I guide them through the representation of each of the senses in the work. Beethoven’s ears get lost in the expressive surface, and Beethoven lost his hearing at age forty-four. I also go through sight and then most importantly, touch. Bordell prioritizes the hands, both in scale and in the drama of the surface, in order to draw resonance between himself and Beethoven as both artists at the hand, Beethoven as a composer and Bordell as a sculptor.
CH: Do you have one memory from giving highlights tours or the Gallery Guide program in general that you’ll remember after you graduate from Yale?
ED: I say all the time how much I love touring kids. There was one specific tour where this little girl was hitting the nail on the head for every single question I was asking. It wasn’t because those questions required any sort of historical context. In fact, it was the complete surrender to close looking and learning from observation that she was able to hit the nail on the head. I think adults sometimes can be clouded by context.
CH: How has the Gallery Guide program allowed you to connect with the world outside of Yale?
ED: First of all, the gallery’s commitment to access is something that I really value, the free admission, the highlight tours are first come first serve and completely free. Getting to interact with visitors and hear perspectives from around the world and forming different interpretations of a single object is really special. This place means so much to me, and it does for so many others, both guests and guides.
The Gallery Guide program has been a foundational part of my Yale experience, and I wasn’t surprised that the guides I spoke to felt the same way. Most significantly, the Gallery Guide program has connected me with a New Haven beyond the borders of Yale. Most visitors are not Yale-affiliated; some live nearby, some are visiting from far away. After graduating from Yale, I hope I will retain the skills I’ve developed as a guide: most notably, the ability to talk to anyone about art.
