NEW HAVEN, CT.- Seven college and university art museums have embarked upon a program of significant loans and shared expertise, intended to foster intra- and inter-institutional collaboration, expand opportunities for faculty from all disciplines to teach from works of art, and strengthen the diverse community of college art museums. Initiated by the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG), the program has been funded by a generous grant of $750,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Central to the project is a strategic program of loans from YUAG’s encyclopedic collection, comprising nearly 200,000 works, to six “partner museums,” for use in specially developed exhibitions and related coursework. The Yale University Art Gallery Collection-Sharing Initiative derives from the belief that, while technologies have increased access to museum collections, there is no substitute for original works of art, which contain not only a particular magnetism, but also a wealth of information a