Signs of Time: and the Science of the Stars in the Renaissance (September 4, 2026 –February 22, 2027). Signs of Time is a story about “the science of the stars” in the Renaissance: a cross-cultural prognostic practice that brought celestial events to bear on interpretations of time, from seasonal cycles and courses of illness to calendar reform and biblical chronology. At the center of the story are the remarkably stable graphic traditions attached to this practice, which rendered astronomical time intelligible, narratable, and consequential for earthly experience.

Showcasing an extraordinary array of rare books and early printed works from the collections of the Medical Historical Library (Yale University), the exhibition asks: What celestial phenomena counted as signs of time? How were those signs read and recorded? And who had the authority to interpret them? From the politics of prognostication to the physics of planetary influence, Signs of Time presents a unique chapter in Renaissance history: when medical, theological, and geopolitical interests converged around efforts to understand, organize, and claim authority over time through the science of the stars.

Signs of Time: and the Science of the Stars in the Renaissance (September 4, 2026–February 22, 2027)

Permanent Exhibition. The Edward C. Streeter Collection of Weights and Measures (Installed May 2025). A cornerstone of the Medical Historical Library, The Edward Clark Streeter Collection of Weights and Measures is one of the most temporally and geographically comprehensive collections of its kind in the world. Comprising more than 3,000 artifacts, it spans a dizzying array of materials, cultures, and histories: from stone-carved Babylonian “duck” weights and mathematical treatises by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72) and Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) to divination instruments from the personal collection of famed esotericist Éliphas Lévi (1810–75). But the most extraordinary feature of the collection is its accessibility. This is a study collection. Every object can be requested by researchers for closer examination.

Anatomy of a Collector: Gertrude van Wagenen, 1893–1978 (September 5, 2025–January 21, 2026)

A Cosmos of Similarity. An exhibition about arts of measure (February 13, 2025–August 20, 2025). Imagine a world in which similarity is the foundation of everything. The philosopher and cultural theorist Walther Benjamin (1892–1940) sketched this idea in an essay from 1932, in which he proposed a new approach to the history of science. “The approach,” he said, “looks like this: we start with similarity. We then try to obtain clarity about the fact that the resemblances we can perceive, for example, in people’s faces, in buildings and plant forms, in certain cloud formations and skin diseases, are nothing more than tiny prospects from a cosmos of similarity.” If similarity in Benjamin’s cosmos is a mimetic force and mode of vision, then it is also a model of history. It replaces traditional narrative patterns of rupture (e.g., decline and rebirth, stagnation and revolution) with likeness. A Cosmos of Similarity puts Benjamin’s ideas into practice. Showcasing extraordinary yet lesser-known works from the Library collections, the exhibition reveals an historical world in which mathematics, aesthetics, physics, theology, and medicine intertwine; a world in which knowledge takes place by likeness…

Mindscapes: Stories of Mental Health through Yale’s Collections (February–August 2024)

Nursing and World War Propaganda‍ ‍(August 2023–January 2024)

Online Exhibition. Medical Astrology: Science, Art, and Influence in Early Modern Europe (launched July 2021) https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/medicalastrology

HSAR 411: Art and Aesthetics in Germany, 1750 to the Present.

(MHL) Prognostication and Prophecy

(MHL) Books, Bodies, and Artistic Anatomy

(MHL) Signs and Portents: Early Modern Science in Times of Siege

(MHL) The Baroque Sunspot Debates

(MHL) Images of Astral Observation in Baroque Rome: Stars, Sunspots, and the Moon

(MHL) Visual History of Anatomy, 1500–1800

(MHL) Astrology and its Visual History

(MHL) Medical Astrology

(MHL) Paper Instruments and Movable Prints

(MHL) History of Printing

Adolph Menzel and the Aesthetic Education of Germany is a history of how art helped shape a cultural nation. It examines the complex local and global dynamics at play in the cultural formation of modern Germany, through the life and work of one of the most high-profile yet widely underestimated artists of the 19th century: Adolph von Menzel (1815–1905). The first study to approach Menzel as an intellectual, social, and political figure, it shows how his artwork and star power were repeatedly instrumentalized to support competing conceptions of German identity. The book traces the drama of Menzel’s much contested legacy back to the multi-signifying potential of his imagery: a pictorial strategy that reached its apex with his turn toward realism. A wealth of archival evidence brings to light the pedagogical stakes of this realist turn, revealing how Menzel devised an aesthetic model of unity, rooted in multiplicity and difference, that ultimately countered Prussia’s authoritarian push for national uniformity.

“Object Lesson: Hiding in Plain Sight,” Yale Alumni Magazine LXXXIX, No. 5 (May/June 2026): 54–55. https://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/6209-object-lesson-hiding-in-plain-sight

“Chaucer, Medicine, and the Stars,” Yale Alumni Magazine LXXXV, No. 2 (Nov./Dec. 2021): 72–73. https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/5393-chaucer-medicine-and-the-stars

“Rebus and Realism: A Prolegomenon to the ‘Work’ of Adolph Menzel,” The Art Bulletin 103, No. 3 (September 2021): 69–96. Abstract: Adolph Menzel (1815–1905), the renowned realist and painter of Prussian history, had a surprising penchant for rebus puzzles. Relatively unknown and unstudied, Menzel’s rebuses open the door to a radical reevaluation of his realism. Analysis of these puzzles and their historical affiliation with the concepts of Phantasie (imagination) and Bildung (self-cultivation), establishes them as a valuable heuristic for understanding Menzel’s various processes of “work,” and their significance for the viewer. Aligning realism with the concept of Bildung, Menzel’s rebuses reveal his realism to be a program of aesthetic education with formidable cultural and political implications. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2021.1882799

Video: How to Use the Lunar Node Calculator from the Astronomicum Caesareum (1540) https://vimeo.com/556254446/2d511d5033