For generations, Yale College courses have opened new worlds to undergraduates by engaging them with the university’s library and museum collections. Students explore the archives of literary luminaries. They closely examine artwork and artifacts from across cultures and history. They turn parchment pages and handle exquisitely crafted objects.
This fall, dozens of first-year students didn’t simply study a contemporary sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery. They rolled up their sleeves and built one.
The students, who are enrolled in what is known as the “Six Pretty Good Ideas” seminar program, helped erect “Monument (Pyramid),” a sculpture by artist Maren Hassinger that the gallery acquired earlier this year. Instead of obtaining the completed sculpture — a 10-foot-tall pyramid composed of tree branches affixed to a steel frame — the museum acquired a set of instructions guiding the piece’s installation, which prioritized community involvement.
The project is part of the ‘Six Pretty Good Ideas’ seminar, in which first-year students explore a theme through six works of literature or art representing various times and cultures around the globe.
“Maren is interested in using her work to create opportunities for people in the community to come together and have a social experience while building the sculpture,” said Margaret Ewing, the Horace W. Goldsmith Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, who proposed the acquisition and oversaw the installation. “Providing that experience was central to this project.”
Ewing mentioned the project to Kathryn Slanski, who leads the “Six Pretty Good Ideas” program, during dinner one evening at Jonathan Edwards College, where both are fellows.
“Margaret wasn’t sure where to find students, and I thought, ‘I might just have the perfect students for you,’” said Slanski, senior lecturer in near eastern languages and civilizations, and in humanities. “The opportunity to have our students not only working with an object at the gallery, but actually installing it, was something that I couldn’t pass up.”
The “Six Pretty Good Ideas” program, launched in 2021 and co-sponsored by the First Year Seminars Program and the Humanities Program, is a suite of five seminars that introduces first-year students to the study of humanities at Yale. In each course students are asked to explore a theme exemplified through six works of literature or art representing various times and cultures around the globe. Viewing these works as “pretty good” promotes a playful spirit as students consider who has valued the six works and why they matter.
Margaret [the curator] wasn’t sure where to find students, and I thought, ‘I might just have the perfect students for you.’
The opportunity to help build a sculpture aligned with the program’s goals, Slanski said. It engaged students with one of Yale’s special collections in a unique and interesting way; provided a behind-the-scenes learning experience to fuel the students’ ideas during the program’s weekly three-hour writing lab; and strengthened the vibrant intellectual community that the program seeks to foster.
“Having the students, who have various backgrounds and interests, working side-by-side on a unique project furthers our goal of building a special kind of learning-based community across the five seminars,” Slanski said. “It’s the sort of experience that everyone should have the opportunity to be a part of at Yale.”
The community experience extended beyond campus. The gallery partnered with Gather New Haven, a local nonprofit organization committed to social and environmental justice, to source the many hundreds of tree branches needed to assemble the sculpture.
Buckthorn branches attached to the sculpture were collected at Quinnipiac Meadows, a nature preserve owned and managed by Gather New Haven, a local nonprofit organization committed to social and environmental justice. Buckthorn is an invasive species. (Photo by Kyle Hurley)
Over three days, volunteers from the museum’s staff and their families worked with Gather New Haven staff and local volunteers to harvest buckthorn, an invasive shrub or small tree, from Quinnipiac Meadows, a 35-acre nature preserve the organization maintains in the Fair Haven neighborhood along the Quinnipiac River.
“We were able to get the materials we needed, and Gather New Haven got some help removing invasive buckthorn,” Ewing said.
Suitable branches — those long and thin enough to form the pyramid’s walls — were hauled to the museum’s Margaret and Angus Wurtele Sculpture Garden.
‘Familiar and substantial’
Early in her career, Maren Hassinger was part of the Black Arts Movement, a revolutionary movement founded in 1965 that was devoted to highlighting the works of Black artists and centering the empowerment, pride, and liberation of Black Americans.
A pyramid has a lot of power because of its simplicity. We’ve all seen it repeated in various ways throughout our lives. It’s familiar and substantial.
Since the 1970s, her work has grappled with questions related to the environment, humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and the interplay between nature and urban life, Ewing said.
“Monument (Pyramid)” is a continuation of a series of eight sculptures Hassinger made from tree branches for a 2018 exhibition, organized by the Studio Museum in Harlem, in New York’s Marcus Garvey Park.
“She used the branches to create abstract forms responding to different aspects of the park’s landscape,” Ewing said.
Hassinger’s pyramid was unveiled in 2023 for Sculpture Milwaukee’s exhibition “Nature Doesn’t Know About Us,” the organization’s sixth-annual program of public art in the Wisconsin city. The sculpture’s shape responded to the monumental architecture of the city’s skyline.
“A pyramid has a lot of power because of its simplicity,” Hassinger said. “We’ve all seen it repeated in various ways throughout our lives. It’s familiar and substantial.”
That initial sculpture was also made of buckthorn branches.
“It seems appropriate for an outdoor monument to be made of materials that exist naturally outdoors,” she said.
The build
The branches were attached to chicken wire wrapped around the sculptures frame and woven together. (Photo by Kyle Hurley)
Over the course of one week earlier this fall, every student of “Six Pretty Good Ideas” put in an 80-minute shift helping museum staff and Hassinger’s studio assistants build the sculpture, which is placed on a slate platform abutting the glass wall of the Gallery’s Louis Kahn building.
I’m glad they had the opportunity to get outside and touch nature and work together building something for others to enjoy.
The sculpture’s steel frame was wrapped in chicken wire. The buckthorn branches were attached to the wire with zip ties and then woven together. Camouflage netting was spread over the interior of the frame to fill gaps and create a sense of weight to the otherwise hollow form.
Senuli Peiris, a student of the “Six Pretty Good Interior Journeys” seminar, spent her shift sorting branches by size and attaching them to the frame.
“It was nice to focus on the task at hand and get lost in the work,” she said. “I hadn’t heard of artworks being assembled in this way before, so I appreciate the experience. I’m interested to see what the sculpture looks like when its finished.”
Senuli Peiris, a first-year Yale College student enrolled in the “Six Pretty Good Interior Journeys” seminar, attaches buckthorn branches to the sculpture’s frame. Students from the “Six Pretty Good Ideas” series each spent an 80-minute shift helping to install the sculpture. (Photo by Kyle Hurley)
Hassinger viewed photos of the work in progress and the completed sculpture. What she saw impressed her.
“They did such a lovely job,” she said. “It is attractive and makes physical sense. Everything is flowing nicely. I’m just very pleased with how it looks.”
But craftsmanship aside, Hassinger said she was happy that the project gave students a chance to work together to build something.
“I’m glad they had the opportunity to get outside and touch nature and work together building something for others to enjoy,” she said. “Maybe it’ll help them proceed with their own ideas. And their own works don’t necessarily have to be artworks, but just something that interests them that they want to explore and see through to the end.”
Hassinger, who this week will join students from “Six Pretty Good Ideas” for a conversation about her work and their experiences with the installation, will return to campus on Jan. 30 at 5:30 p.m. for a public conversation with Ewing in the Yale University Art Gallery’s auditorium.
