The gallery is an important visual and cultural presence at Yale and in the community of New Haven.  Since the building was an addition, its success in relating to the existing structure is essential to its overall success.   Patricia Cummings Loud notes that the gallery’s dimensions, proportions and colors blend the new structure with the old.   The building’s most notable elements are its tactile materials and surfaces, bold geometric forms, crisp lines, and sensitive use of light.  The variety and tensions that stem from the interplay of these elements (such as the play with natural and artificial light and the tension between delicate partitions and heavy concrete walls) creates a dynamic and aesthetically successful space.  Canonical status: Often considered the first of Kahn’s masterpieces, The Yale Art Gallery is representative of a new dimension in Kahn’s work and foreshadows the works of his later career.   In the larger sense, Kahn’s gallery “Represented a turn away from mainstream Modernism” and, in essence, “escaped…Modernism’s suffocating orthodoxies.”    This departure reflects the evolving aesthetic of the modern style and opened a new period of modern design.  Some, such as architect Reyner Banham, cite this work as the inspiration for Brutalist architecture.