Yale and MoMA team up to resurrect visionary light works

Nearly a decade ago, a Seattle-based collector visiting New Haven, Connecticut, asked to see three works from the 1920s and 1930s by the artist Thomas Wilfred in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery. The objects, two strangely resembling flatscreen televisions and one a lamp on a table, had remained deep in storage for decades. When the collector asked the accompanying curator and conservators to plug in and switch on the works, they were understandably hesitant. One of us grabbed