Northwest elevation, detail where it meets the southwest elevation; The Yale University Art Gallery was Louis I. Kahn's first significant commission and is widely considered his first masterpiece. Designed while Kahn was a visiting critic at the Yale School of Architecture, the building--the first of three art museums that he would design--represented a dramatic point of departure for American museum architecture as a whole. Constructed of brick, concrete, glass, and steel, and presenting a windowless wall along its most public façade, the building was a radical break from the neo-Gothic buildings that characterize much of the campus, including the adjacent Swartwout building. Kahn's design has been celebrated not only for its beauty, geome...