NEW HAVEN, CONN.- The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) announced today a commission by internationally renowned artist Richard Long. Gravity is a monumental site-specific installation for the museum’s Entrance Court, inaugurating a year of programming marking the institution’s 50th anniversary in 2027.

For Gravity, Long uses his hands to sweep clay across the surface of a freestanding wall measuring twenty-six feet wide by ten feet tall, making a dynamic composition that sets off a dialogue with the iconic flat, steel surfaces of the Louis I. Kahn–designed YCBA building. On view from November 4, 2026, through July 11, 2027, Richard Long: Gravity exemplifies the artist’s longstanding connection with the landscape and the physical act of engaging with natural materials, and serves as a prologue to two landscape-focused exhibitions on concurrent view in the galleries: John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined and Sightlines: British Landscape Photography, 1840 to Now.

“Created at the very threshold of the museum, Richard Long's poetic installation literally brings the earth into our Entrance Court," said Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director, YCBA. "Gravity invites us to think about landscape in new ways, and makes an evocative connection with John Constable’s vision of a rural England at a time of profound change.”

Visible from the street and welcoming visitors into the museum, the commission is the first in a series of contemporary art installations for the YCBA’s Entrance Court made possible by a transformative grant from the Bukhman Foundation. Building on the museum’s previous activations of this space, the initiative brings two installations to the Entrance Court each year and will expand opportunities for audiences to encounter and interpret contemporary art in dialogue with the museum’s historic collections. The Bukhman Foundation grant also supports interpretative materials and free youth, public, and community programs.

“Richard Long uses the simplest means—clay, and his hands—to evoke the land and our connection to the earth in its most elemental form, inside the museum,” said Droth. “This commission reflects our commitment to bringing artists into meaningful dialogue with our architecture, collections, and communities. We are deeply grateful to the Bukhman Foundation for sharing our vision and supporting our Entrance Court program into the future. The grant will ensure that the Entrance Court and the museum more broadly exist as a dynamic site for contemporary artistic expression.”

The commission marks Long’s third collaboration with the YCBA, following the 2022 installation of his Quantock Wood Circle in the Library Court and his participation in the 1984 exhibition The Critical Eye/I, the first contemporary art exhibition held at the museum, for which he created three site-specific works.

Richard Long was born in Bristol, UK, in 1945 and he lives and works between London and Bristol. He studied at the West of England College of Art, Bristol (1962–65), then St. Martin’s School of Art, London (1966–68).

Major solo exhibitions include Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2023); M Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (2021); Chateau La Coste, Provence, France (2021); De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (2019); Fondation CAB, Brussels, Belgium (2018); Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK (2017); Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2015); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany (2010); Tate Britain, London, UK (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, UK (2007); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, USA (2006); National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan (1996); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA (1994); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA (1986).

Long represented Britain at the 37th Venice Biennale (1976) and won the Turner Prize (1989). He received the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture (1990), was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2001), and was awarded Japan’s Praemium Imperiale in the field of sculpture (2009). In addition, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2013) and was knighted in the 2018 Honours List.