Eye on a Century celebrates a cornerstone of the Yale University Art Gallery's holdings: the Charles B. Benenson Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. This major bequest includes works by a veritable pantheon of modern and contemporary artists—among them Jean-Michel Basquiat, Stuart Davis, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, James Rosenquist, and David Smith. The catalogue provides exciting new scholarship on some of the collection's most significant objects, including works by Alexander Calder, Kurt Schwitters, and Pablo Picasso, alongside lesser-known works, by artists such as Alicia Penalba, David Wojnarowicz, and Martin Wong, several of which have never before been published. The introduction, which examines the context of Benenson's collecting, is followed by more than fifty catalogue entries and an illustrated checklist of the complete collection.

Cathleen Chaffee is the Horace W. Goldsmith Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery.