Objects that represent tradition — and welcome a new generation of leadership

A handwritten document that is a physical link to the founding of what became Yale College. Keys to historic campus spaces. A collar representing the constellation of schools that make up the university today — and conferring upon its wearer the authority of the president of Yale. 

These items and more will be meaningful elements in the Sunday, April 6, installation ceremony that will symbolically induct Maurie McInnis as Yale’s 24th president, following the formal start of her tenure on July 1, 2024. The ceremony will take place in Woolsey Hall, culminating a week of inaugural events.

Through these ceremonial objects, the university remains connected to its history and traditions while recognizing its constant evolution and its aspirations — and its continued dedication to the creation, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge. 

“You are reaching out 325 years to the university’s beginning, and bringing it together here in this ceremony,” Michael Lotstein, the university archivist, said of the traditional elements of inauguration. “It is a culmination of all the history that comes into view through the installation ceremony. And then a new history begins at the same time.”

From the university’s origins

Four historical objects connected to the university’s earliest days will be part of McInnis’ installation, signifying the roles and responsibilities she has assumed as university president. On the Woolsey Hall stage, she will sit in the Wainscot Chair, a 17th-century great chair once owned by Reverend Abraham Pierson, first rector of the Collegiate School, a role synonymous with that of the president of the present-day university. The university’s senior trustee, Josh Bekenstein ’80, will then present McInnis with the university’s charter, its seal, and four keys to historic spaces on campus, each one representing a singular aspect of the presidential role.

The charter, the university’s founding document, represents the president’s administrative authority, as well Yale’s establishment as the first institution of higher education in Connecticut. 

Set in a special box to help preserve its parchment and ink from the light, the charter is written in longhand and affixed with a red wax seal. Signed on Oct. 9, 1701, the “act for Liberty to erect a Collegiate School” allowed for the “endowing & ordering a Collegiate School within his Majties Colony of Connecticot wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts & Sciences who thorough the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church & Civil State.”

“I always call it ‘the charter to establish the Collegiate School of the Colony of Connecticut,’ because it wasn’t Yale University, it wasn’t in New Haven — there was no United States of America. It’s important to maintain that context because there’s so much more history behind it that you can imagine,” said Lotstein. It wasn’t until 1718 that the Collegiate School became Yale College, and until 1887 that it became Yale University. “You have in 1701 a school of only a few students in Old Saybrook [a town on the Connecticut shoreline, about 30 miles east of New Haven]. And that’s what this document represents: a small beginning that evolved into an incredible future for the university.”

The university seal, which dates to 1722, represents the president’s authority to transact business on behalf of the university. Its imagery, etched into a bronze disk about the size of a hockey puck, is of an open book, inscribed with the Hebrew words Urim v’Thummim (“light and perfections”), along with the Latin motto Lux et Veritas (“light and truth”) — the same image that is embossed on every Yale diploma. 

Finally, the four keys represent the physical space of campus and the president’s role in safeguarding it. The keys are to Connecticut Hall, the oldest building on campus; Dwight Hall, or the “Old Library,” as was its function from 1842 until Sterling Memorial Library opened in 1931; the Harkness Tower gateway; and Sterling Memorial Library — which also symbolizes the fact that Yale was founded with a gift of books. 

During the installation ceremony, McInnis will have the unique privilege of sitting in Pierson’s chair — a privilege only afforded to Yale presidents and only during their inauguration. Otherwise, the chair is kept on view at the Yale University Art Gallery, where it has resided since 1841.

Made around 1650, in Branford, Connecticut, it is notable for its eponymous wainscot panel back and the lathe-turned Doric columns of its legs and arm supports. “With this work, a turner working in Branford in the late 17th century is demonstrating his knowledge of the classical past and, by extension, saying that he’s part of a larger historical and artistic tradition,” said John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Gallery.

“Its day job is being an art object,” he added. “Its side job is being a university ceremonial object.”

Artistry and innovation

Two other ceremonial objects — the university mace and the president’s collar — are featured during the installation; they also play their symbolic roles as emblems of authority in other university ceremonies.

The university mace, four feet long, 24 pounds, and made of solid sterling silver, was commissioned for the university by then-Professor Samuel Simons Sanford in 1903 and made by Tiffany and Co. — a project that took 742 hours over a span of three months. Its rich imagery includes palm fronds, for peace; laurel, for victory; ivy, for education; oak, for longevity; an acorn, for wisdom; elm leaves, a nod to New Haven (its nickname is the “Elm City”); and a pinecone, for immortality. At its top, four winged figures who represent the four key areas of the university — theology, art, science, and law — hold up an orb of gold-flecked lapis lazuli. 

“The ambition of the design is just an extraordinary thing,” said Gordon — an iconography meant to draw on European traditions of authority and grandeur. “The time when this mace was made for the university was just after its bicentennial, and it really marked a moment when Yale stopped being a local institution and became a world university. There was this very purposeful shift around the bicentennial of how Yale thought about itself and how Yale was perceived by the world.”

The mace’s shaft is engraved with the name of every Yale president, beginning with Pierson. The most recent addition — Maurie McInnis — was etched onto the mace by Paul Lantuch, a local master engraver.

The university mace will be carried in the inaugural procession by the chief marshal — this year, a role filled by Alison Cole, the executive director of the Yale Alumni Association — and symbolizes the authority of the president and the Yale Corporation.

The presidential collar, an ornamental chain, draws from a medieval tradition for signifying power and represents the president’s authority at large. During the installation ceremony, the collar will be placed on McInnis’ shoulders by Bekenstein, the senior trustee, and then fastened by Kimberly Goff-Crews, the secretary and vice president for university life — symbolically transferring to McInnis the authority of the Yale presidency. 

McInnis’ robe was custom made for the inauguration ceremony by the costume shop of the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale and Yale Repertory Theatre: Christine Szczepanski, the costume shop manager, sourced the fabric and facilitated the project, while Clarissa Wylie Youngberg, senior draper, and Pat Van Horn, senior first hand, constructed the garment. The robe features special loops on which the collar fastens, so that it drapes wide and low across the shoulders. 

The original presidential collar, also commissioned by Sanford, in 1903, went missing in the late 1970s; the university commissioned a new one from the artist William Harper that was completed in 1982. “There was a very purposeful decision made not to recreate something old,” said Gordon. “It is taking an old fashioned, old-world trope and reinventing it in a modern language.”

The gold and silver chain is made up of cloisonné enamel beads depicting the crests of Yale’s graduate and professional schools, Yale College, and Yale University, along with the great seal of the United States. (Cloisonné is a traditional enameling technique for decorating metal objects, using metal wire to create a design filled by the enamel.) A rock crystal pendant, framed by cloisonné enamel plaques inscribed with the Hebrew words Urim v’Thummim and the Latin motto Lux et Veritas, encases a hammered gold sheet embossed with the Yale crest. 

“Harper takes an unorthodox approach to these materials, yet the beads are all cloisonné enamel, a very traditional enamel working technique,” said Gordon. “It is colorful and the color, I think, is one of its key features. There is a dynamism to the design.”

The collar was recently updated to include schools not previously represented, including the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. To balance the weight of the longer chain, Harper added a new roundel of his own design. 

“The new roundel is a work of art in its own right,” said Gordon. “Much of the collar looks like Harper translated for Yale, but this new piece, which helps balance the symmetry and helps balance the physical weight, is Harper as an artist.”

It is a fitting example, said Gordon, of the way these objects can signify history and tradition, but also innovation and evolution. And including them in the inauguration, he said, gives the entire community a chance to reflect on the university’s past while greeting a new generation of leadership. 

“It’s about someone being welcomed,” said Gordon. “To use very contemporary language for a centuries-old tradition, the procession and the laying out of the objects are holding space for people to acknowledge a transition of power, to acknowledge a new way of looking at the world, and to acknowledge all of the responsibilities that come with this new relationship.”

The university mace and Wainscot Chair will be on view at the Yale University Art Gallery from March 25 through April 4.