***All library exhibitions are closed until further notice as part of the university’s COVID-19 response. We invite you to visit our online exhibitions***

In conjunction with the 50 Women at Yale 150 campus-wide celebration, two Yale College seniors have curated side-by-side exhibits on two different aspects of women at Yale using materials from library collections.

Valentina Connell’s exhibit looks at the evolution of housing policy and residential life in Yale College over the past fifty years, since the first undergraduate women were admitted in 1969. Based on research in the library’s Manuscripts and Archives Department, the exhibit shows that residential life was one of the most difficult aspects of gender integration. Residences were overcrowded, and the first women undergraduates, still a small minority on campus, felt isolated.

Mariana Melin-Corcoran’s exhibit explores the history of women’s involvement in the Yale School of Architecture. The Yale School of Fine Arts enrolled women students from its opening in 1869, but restricted them to more traditional courses of sculpture and painting. When the Department of Architecture was inaugurated in 1916 and until the late 1940s and early 1950s, only men were allowed to enroll. Among the first women architecture graduates were Leona Anneberg Nalle (M.Arch 1956) and Estelle Margolis (B.Arch. 1955). In 2016, the School of Architecture appointed its first female leader, Dean Deborah Berke.

Curated by: Valentina Connell ‘20 and Mariana Melin-Corcoran ‘20