Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
gallery of art, located in
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...
. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works of art ranging from antiquity to the contemporary period. The Princeton University Art Museum dedicates itself to supporting and enhancing the university's goals of teaching, research, and service in fields of art and culture, as well as to serving regional communities and visitors from around the world. Its collections concentrate on the Mediterranean region, Western Europe, Asia, the United States, and Latin America.
The museum has a large collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including ceramics, marbles, bronzes, and Roman mosaics from Princeton University's excavations in
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπ ...
. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art. Photographic holdings are a particular strength, numbering over 27,000 works from the invention of
daguerreotype
Daguerreotype (; french: daguerréotype) was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process.
Invented by Louis Daguerre an ...
in 1839 to the present. The museum is also noted for its Asian art gallery, which includes a wide collection of Chinese calligraphy, painting, ancient bronze works, jade carvings as well as porcelain selections. In addition to its collections, the museum mounts regular temporary exhibitions featuring works from its own holdings as well as loans made from public and private collections around the world.
Admission is free and the museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, Thursday, 10:00 am to 9:00 pm, and Sunday 12:00 to 5:00 pm.
A new building for the museum will be constructed on the same site over the course of three years starting in 2021 with
David Adjaye
Sir David Frank Adjaye (born 22 September 1966) is a Ghanaian-British architect. He is known for having designed many notable buildings around the world, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C ...
serving as architect. Demolition of the former facility began in June 2021; construction of the 145,000 square feet facility began late that year. Reopening is currently projected for late 2024.
The Princeton University Art Museum is part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched in 2021 by the
Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art
The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art is an American IRS approved 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which honors the legacy of those who served in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program during and after World War ...
. Several "
monuments men
A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...
" are alumni of
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
.
History
Beginnings
The first art work owned and displayed by the College of New Jersey (renamed Princeton University in 1896) was a full-length portrait of
Jonathan Belcher
Jonathan Belcher (8 January 1681/8231 August 1757) was a merchant, politician, and slave trader from colonial Massachusetts who served as both governor of Massachusetts Bay and governor of New Hampshire from 1730 to 1741 and governor of New J ...
, the governor of the province of New Jersey who had promoted the establishment of the college. The portrait was a donation from Belcher himself, given shortly before the college moved in 1756 to the newly built
Nassau Hall
Nassau Hall, colloquially known as Old Nassau, is the oldest building at Princeton University in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. In 1783 it served as the United States Capitol building for four months. At the time it was built ...
. It was joined by a portrait of King
George II George II or 2 may refer to:
People
* George II of Antioch (seventh century AD)
* George II of Armenia (late ninth century)
* George II of Abkhazia (916–960)
* Patriarch George II of Alexandria (1021–1051)
* George II of Georgia (1072–1089)
* ...
, who had issued the
letters patent
Letters patent ( la, litterae patentes) ( always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, titl ...
establishing the college. The two portraits hung in the central prayer hall, and were displayed alongside various
antiquities
Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Meso ...
and objects of natural history. The two paintings were destroyed during the 1777 Battle of Princeton and further objects were lost in the 1802 Nassau Hall fire, but the college continued its commitment to collecting and teaching from works of art and historical note.
Establishment
The creation of the Art Museum in a more formal sense took place under the leadership of
James McCosh
James McCosh (April 1, 1811 – November 16, 1894) was a philosopher of the Scottish School of Common Sense. He was president of Princeton University 1868–88.
Biography
McCosh was born into a Covenanting family in Ayrshire, and ...
, who served as president of the College of New Jersey from 1868–88. The Scottish McCosh brought with him from Europe new progressive academic disciplines, including the history of art. By 1882, McCosh charged
William Cowper Prime
William Cowper Prime (1825–1905) was an American journalist, art historian, numismatist, attorney, and travel writer.
Early life
William Prime was the younger brother of S. I. Prime and E. D. G. Prime, born at Cambridge, New York on Octobe ...
, a Princeton alumnus and founding trustee of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, and
George B. McClellan
George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was an American soldier, Civil War Union general, civil engineer, railroad executive, and politician who served as the 24th governor of New Jersey. A graduate of West Point, McCl ...
, the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
general and then
governor of New Jersey
The governor of New Jersey is the head of government of New Jersey. The office of governor is an elected position with a four-year term. There is a two consecutive term term limit, with no limitation on non-consecutive terms. The official res ...
, with creating a curriculum in the subject. They argued: "The foundation of any system of education in Historic Art must obviously be in object study. A museum of art objects is so necessary to the system that without it we are of heopinion it would be of small utility to introduce the proposed department.” The intention was to go beyond the fields of art and classics to include, “many other branches of the collegiate course.” They anticipated, “large future growth,” as the college could “look with confidence to her sons, in all parts of the world,” for future donations.
Allan Marquand (1882–1922)
The museum, and what is now the Department of Art and Archaeology, were formally created in 1882, with
Allan Marquand
Allan Marquand (; December 10, 1853 – September 24, 1924) was an art historian at Princeton University and a curator of the Princeton University Art Museum.
Early life
Marquand was born on December 10, 1853 in New York City. He was a son of ...
, of the Princeton Class of 1874, serving as the inaugural lecturer in the new department and director of the museum, a position he would hold until his retirement in 1922. Marquand was previously instructor in Latin and logic at the college and was the son of
Henry Gurdon Marquand
Henry Gurdon Marquand (April 11, 1819 – February 26, 1902) was an American financier, philanthropist and art collector known for his extensive collection.
Early life
Marquand was born in New York City on April 11, 1819, not long after the dea ...
, a major benefactor of the college and one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collections of the museum were initially held in Nassau Hall, along with the growing natural history collection of professor
Arnold Henry Guyot
Arnold Henry Guyot ( ) (September 28, 1807February 8, 1884) was a Swiss-American geologist and geographer.
Early life
Guyot was born on September 28, 1807, at Boudevilliers, near Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was educated at Chaux-de-Fonds, th ...
, part of which is still on display in Guyot Hall. A new purpose-built fireproof
Romanesque Revival
Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended to ...
Museum was designed by
A. Page Brown
A. Page Brown, born Arthur Page Brown (December 1859 – January 21, 1896), was an American architect known for buildings that incorporated classical styles in the Beaux-Arts manner. Having first worked in the office of McKim, Mead and White ...
and completed in 1890 on the site of the current museum.
On completion of the building the museum received the Trumball-Prime collection of pottery and porcelain from William Prime and his wife. Early additions included the purchase of a large collection of Cypriot pottery from the Metropolitan Museum in 1890, and purchases of
Etruscan __NOTOC__
Etruscan may refer to:
Ancient civilization
*The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy
*Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization
**Etruscan architecture
**Etruscan art
**Etruscan cities
** Etrusca ...
, Roman, and South Italian pottery. Marquand established an endowment from his own resources to enable further purchases and it was significantly augmented by a donation from
Edward Harkness
Edward Stephen Harkness (January 22, 1874 – January 29, 1940) was an American philanthropist. Given privately and through his family's Commonwealth Fund, Harkness' gifts to private hospitals, art museums, and educational institutions in the Nort ...
.
Growth
Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (1922–46)
Frank Jewett Mather
Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (6 July 1868 – 11 November 1953) was an American art critic and professor. He was the first "modernist" (i.e., post-classicist) professor at the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. He was a direct desc ...
joined the faculty in 1910 and succeeded Marquand as museum director in 1922. He was a collector of Medieval and Renaissance art but also led the university to large holdings of paintings and
prints
In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...
, including the 1933 bequest of several thousand objects by
Junius Spencer Morgan II
Junius Spencer Morgan II (June 5, 1867 – August 18, 1932) was a banker, art collector and nephew of John Pierpont Morgan, Sr.
Early life
Junius Spencer Morgan II was born on June 5, 1867 in Irvington, New York to George Hale Morgan (1840–191 ...
, of the Princeton Class of 1888. In 1923, the first of many expansions of the Art Museum was completed with the addition of the
Venetian Gothic
Venetian Gothic is the particular form of Italian Gothic architecture typical of Venice, originating in local building requirements, with some influence from Byzantine architecture, and some from Islamic architecture, reflecting Venice's trading ...
Harold Fowler McCormick
Harold Fowler McCormick (May 2, 1872 – October 16, 1941) was an American businessman. He was chairman of the board of International Harvester Company and a member of the McCormick family. In 1948 he was awarded the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal b ...
, Class of 1895. The new building enabled the older structure to be devoted solely to the museum, and led to the creation of a hall of casts on the ground floor.
As Marquand had before him, Mather augmented the museum's collections through the use of his personal fortune, with contributions ranging from Classical and
Pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...
antiquities, to
illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, the ...
s, and what became one of the finest collections of American drawings in the country. Major gifts during the 1930s included a collection of more than 40 Italian paintings from Henry White Cannon, Jr., of the Class of 1910, and more than 500
snuff bottle
Snuff bottles were used during the Qing Dynasty to contain powdered tobacco. Smoking tobacco was illegal during the Qing Dynasty, but the use of snuff was allowed because the Chinese considered snuff to be a remedy for common illnesses such as ...
s, still one of the finest such collections in the country, from Colonel James A. Blair, Class of 1903. The decade also saw significant collections of
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
and
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
art added to support the courses of George Rowley, the first in those fields in an American university. The
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
years ushered in the first classes in American art.
Notable exhibitions during Mather's tenure included one of works by
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
, borrowed from Duncan Philips, and one of highlights from the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
. Before his retirement in 1946, he oversaw a massive influx of
Antioch mosaics
The Antioch mosaics are a grouping of over 300 mosaic floors created around the 3rd century AD, and discovered during archaeological excavations of Antioch (Antioch on the Orontes, in modern Turkey) between 1932 and 1939 by a consortium of five ...
Antioch-on-the-Orontes
Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπ ...
in which the university had played a leading part. Some of the mosaics can be found today not only in the museum but also in various places in
Firestone Library
Princeton University Library is the main library system of Princeton University. With holdings of more than 7 million books, 6 million microforms, and 48,000 linear feet of manuscripts, it is among the largest libraries in the world by number of ...
. He also welcomed the collection of Dan Fellows Platt, a massive assortment of fine objects which arrived by van during the war.
Ernest DeWald (1946–60)
Mather was succeeded by Ernest DeWald, a graduate school alumnus of the Class of 1946, one of the
Monuments Men
A monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its artistic, hist ...
who had been charged with protecting the cultural heritage of Europe during the war. A large number of Princetonians, both alumni and faculty, served with the Monuments program, leading the
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum ( "Museum of Art History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts") is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on the Vienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonal do ...
in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
to loan the museum ''
The Art of Painting
''The Art of Painting'' (Dutch: ''Allegorie op de schilderkunst''), also known as ''The Allegory of Painting'', or ''Painter in his Studio'', is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is owned by the Austri ...
'' by
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer ( , , #Pronunciation of name, see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period Painting, painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class, middle-class life. ...
as a sign of gratitude. DeWald was noted for his
conservation
Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws.
Conservation may also refer to:
Environment and natural resources
* Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...
work, personally cleaning paintings in his office on the top floor the museum. For the university's bicentennial in 1946, he refurbished the galleries, including displaying a new collection of Chinese scrolls donated by Dr. Dubois Schanck Morris, Class of 1893. Under DeWald's tenure, the museum's collection of Asian art greatly increased, aided by the guidance of Professor Wen C. Fong, Class of 1951, who would go on to be the founding director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Asian department. In 1949,
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...
's 1907 ''
The Steerage
''The Steerage'' is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. It has been hailed as one of the greatest photographs of all time because it captures in a single image both a formative document of its time and one of the first ...
'' was the first of the museum's now considerable collection of photographs.
Patrick Joseph Kelleher (1960–73)
Patrick Joseph Kelleher, Class of 1947 and another Monuments Man, succeeded DeWald as director in 1960. He spearheaded the construction of a new home for the museum, made possible by the university's landmark $53 million
capital campaign
Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...
. In 1962 the collections were removed to enable the demolition of the A. Page Brown building and the northern wing of the Ralph Adams Cram structure to make way for the current, Steinmann and Cain designed, International Style building, completed in 1966.
Perhaps the most visible art on the campus is the Putnam Collection of Sculpture. The collection is the result of an anonymous million dollar 1968 donation in honor of Lieutenant John B. Putnam Jr., of the Princeton Class of 1945, who lost his life in a plane crash during World War II. The collection was assembled in 1969 and 1970 by a committee led by Kelleher and including
Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (January 28, 1902 – August 15, 1981) was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From that position, he was one of the most influential forces in the development of ...
and
Thomas Hoving
Thomas Pearsall Field Hoving (January 15, 1931 – December 10, 2009) was an American museum executive and consultant and the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Early life
He was born in New York City to Walter Hoving, the head of Ti ...
. It contains works by seventeen major twentieth century sculptors, including
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his ...
,
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
,
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...
,
Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures.
Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast, ...
,
Isamu Noguchi
was an American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several ...
, David Smith, and Tony Smith.
Kelleher's directorship also saw an increasing focus on photography as an important element of the museum's collections. David Hunter McAlpin, Class of 1920, gave a major collection of photographs to the museum in 1971 as well as endowing a fund for further purchases and a professorship, the first endowed chair in the history of photography in the country. That professorship was occupied by
Peter Bunnell
Peter Curtis Bunnell (October 25, 1937 – September 20, 2021) was an American author, scholar and historian of photography. For more than 40 years he had a significant impact on collecting, exhibiting, teaching and practicing photography through ...
, who would go on to succeed Kelleher as director in 1973.
Further expansion
Peter Bunnell served as director until 1978, training a generation of leading scholars and curators of photography, and giving Princeton a preeminent place in the field with a collection in excess of 27,000 photographs, and significant archives of photographers including
Clarence Hudson White
Clarence Hudson White (April 8, 1871 – July 8, 1925) was an American photographer, teacher and a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement. He grew up in small towns in Ohio, where his primary influences were his family and the social l ...
Ruth Bernhard
Ruth Bernhard (October 14, 1905 – December 18, 2006) was a German-born American photographer.
Early life and education
Bernhard was born in Berlin to Lucian Bernhard and Gertrude Hoffmann. Lucian Bernhard was known for his poster and typeface ...
. In 1980, Allen Rosenbaum became director, focusing on expanding the museums collection of
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
and
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
paintings in the
Mannerist
Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...
tradition. In 1989, Rosenbaum oversaw another expansion of the museum's physical plant, the Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., Class of 1963, Wing. The new wing, designed by Mitchell/Giurgola, provided additional exhibition space, a conservation studio, as well as seminar and study-storage rooms for all areas of the museum's collection.
Under Susan M. Taylor's directorship in the first decade of the 21st century, the museum established its first endowed curatorships. The current director, James Steward, has leadership over a collection of more than 112,000 objects, supplemented by notable collections on long-term loan, including the
Impressionist
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...
and
Post-Impressionist
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
modern art
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...
from the Sonnabend Collection, and perhaps the finest collection of paintings by
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement.
Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside Al ...
, on loan from Herbert Schorr, Graduate School Class of 1963, and his wife, Lenore.
In 2015 the museum was listed by
Fodor's
Fodor's is a publisher of English language travel and tourism information. Fodor's Travel and Fodors.com are divisions of Internet Brands.
History
Founder Eugene Fodor was a keen traveler, but felt that the guidebooks of his time were boring ...
on its list of the top 15 best museums in the United States that is located in a small-town (Princeton, New Jersey) and described as "one of the best university art museums in the world."
In 2020, architect
David Adjaye
Sir David Frank Adjaye (born 22 September 1966) is a Ghanaian-British architect. He is known for having designed many notable buildings around the world, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C ...
The Art Newspaper
''The Art Newspaper'' is a monthly print publication, with daily updates online, founded in 1990 and based in London and New York City. It covers news of the visual arts as they are affected by international politics and economics, developments ...
''. The three-story museum will include nine connected pavilions that include visible storage space and spots where artworks can be inset into floors and walls. In addition to the museum galleries, the building will incorporate a home for the university's department of art and archaeology and a triple-height grand hall, numerous classroom spaces, seminar rooms, creativity labs and a rooftop café.
In anticipation of these disruptions, in September 2019 the museum opened Art@Bainbridge in historic Bainbridge House as a gallery space for experimental work. Two months later it opened a satellite museum store on Palmer Square in downtown Princeton.
Collections
African art
The collection of
African art
African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the African diasporas, su ...
is designed to reveal the immense diversity of artistic work across the continent. Objects are on display from west, central, and South Africa, ranging from royal regalia and objects of prestige, to sculptures marking rites of passage, to those intended to facilitate interaction with spiritual entities.
The first bequest to the Museum of African art was made in 1953 by Mrs. Donald B. Doyle, in honor of her husband. That collection was accumulated before 1923 in what is now the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
, and includes a distinctively shaped Kuba box and a rare double caryatid headrest from the
Chokwe people
__NOTOC__
The Chokwe people, known by many other names (including Kioko, Bajokwe, Chibokwe, Kibokwe, Ciokwe, Cokwe or Badjok), are an ethnic group of Central and Southern Africa. They are found primarily in Angola, southwestern parts of the Democ ...
. More recent gifts have been made by Perry E.H. Smith, including a Chokwe chair, and by H. Kelly Rollings, among whose gifts is an emblem of the Leopard Society, a notable example of an accumulative object from the Cross River region. A 1998 bequest of John B. Elliot includes many objects of daily use and adornment, as well as
Akan Akan may refer to:
People and languages
*Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire
*Akan language, a language spoken by the Akan people
*Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan
*Central Tano languages, a language group w ...
gold pieces, from a linguist's staff to a chief's bracelet. In 2003, a
Yoruba
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...
stool was acquired, considered a sculptural masterpiece that served as the focus of devotion to the god Esu.
The African art collection is small in comparison to others in the museum, though it is an area of growing interest.
American art
The university received its first pieces of American art in the 1750s, but only started collecting in earnest under the directorship of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (1922–46). Few museums accorded significance to American art at the time, allowing Princeton to amass a collection that is among the finest of any academic museum. The collection is particularly strong in painting and sculpture, greatly aided by the large number of portraits of figures affiliated with the university. The museum is strong in the area of landscape painting, especially from the
Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, ...
.
The Boudinot Collection of primarily 18th century fine and decorative art were formerly on display in period rooms created in the museum facility constructed in the 1960s, and subsequently at the nearby Morven Museum and Garden, whose original owners, the Stockton family, were relatives of the Boudinots. Alumnus Edward Duff Balken's donation of
Folk art
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...
led to a substantial collection in that area. New acquisitions, enabled by dedicated endowed funds, are focused on areas where the collection has been less strong, notably
still life
A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...
,
genre painting
Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached ...
, works by native makers, and African American art.
File:Elkanah Watson 1782 John Singleton Copley.jpg,
John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 – September 9, 1815) was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish. Afte ...
, ''
Elkanah Watson
Elkanah Watson (January 22, 1758 – December 5, 1842) was a visionary traveler and writer, agriculturist and canal promoter, banker and businessman. He was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts and died at Port Kent, New York. He worked in Albany ...
'', 1782. The ship in the background represents the departure to America of the acknowledgement of the independence of the United States.
File:1859, Durand, Asher Brown, Landscape.jpg,
Asher Brown Durand
Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796, – September 17, 1886) was an American painter of the Hudson River School.
Early life
Durand was born in, and eventually died in, Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village). He was the eight ...
, ''Landscape'', 1859, part of the
Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, ...
File:William Merritt Chase - Shinnecock, Long Island (c.1896).jpg,
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons School of Design. ...
, ''Landscape: Shinnecock, Long Island'', ca. 1896
File:Oak chair made by Charles Rohlfs, 1898-99, Princeton University Art Museum.JPG,
Charles Rohlfs
Charles Rohlfs (February 15, 1853 – June 30, 1936), was an American actor, patternmaker, stove designer and furniture maker. Rohlfs is a representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and is most famous for his skill as a furniture de ...
, ''Tall Back Chair'', ca. 1898–99
File:Portrait of Charles Percival Buck.jpg,
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists.
For the length ...
, ''Portrait of Charles Percival Buck'', 1904
File:Rainy Day, Fifth Avenue.jpg,
Childe Hassam
Frederick Childe Hassam (; October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressioni ...
, ''Rainy Day, Fifth Avenue'', 1916, part of his Flag series
Ancient, Byzantine, and Islamic art
Ancient art has played a central role in the museum's collection since its beginning. The first major addition to the collection included many
Etruscan __NOTOC__
Etruscan may refer to:
Ancient civilization
*The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy
*Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization
**Etruscan architecture
**Etruscan art
**Etruscan cities
** Etrusca ...
vases, as well as those from
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
,
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
, and
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
. There are now more than 5,000 objects in the collection, documenting the early civilizations of
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
, Iran,
Asia Minor
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
, and the
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...
. The great diversity of artifacts also covers the various eras of ancient Egypt, from pottery to stone
relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...
s, amulets, wall paintings, bronze statuettes, and mummies. The Greek collection includes significant works of both
black-figure
Black-figure pottery painting, also known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic ( grc, , }), is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, although there are ...
and
red-figure
Red-figure vase painting is one of the most important styles of figural Greek vase painting.
It developed in Athens around 520 BCE and remained in use until the late 3rd century BCE. It replaced the previously dominant style of black-figure vas ...
pottery, including the vase used to identify the Princeton Painter. It spans the broad range of artistic work, from Archaic bronze statuettes to
terracotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, a ...
figurines, jewelry to funerary reliefs, pottery from
Rhodes
Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the So ...
,
Cyprus
Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...
, and
Corinth
Corinth ( ; el, Κόρινθος, Kórinthos, ) is the successor to an ancient city, and is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform, it has been part o ...
.
Ancient Italy is in particular well represented in the collection, from the Etruscan vases, metalwork, and sculptures to a great breadth of Roman antiquities. The Roman collection includes portraits, sculptures,
sarcophagi
A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a cadaver, corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from ...
, carved bone, coins, statuettes, and a spectacular silver-gilt wine cup. The university's heritage of archaeological work in
Roman Syria
Roman Syria was an early Roman province annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BC by Pompey in the Third Mithridatic War following the defeat of King of Armenia Tigranes the Great.
Following the partition of the Herodian Kingdom of Judea into tetr ...
has left a legacy of basalt sculptures from
Hauran
The Hauran ( ar, حَوْرَان, ''Ḥawrān''; also spelled ''Hawran'' or ''Houran'') is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, eastwards by the al-Safa (Syria), al-Safa ...
, funerary reliefs from
Palmyra
Palmyra (; Palmyrene: () ''Tadmor''; ar, تَدْمُر ''Tadmur'') is an ancient city in present-day Homs Governorate, Syria. Archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first mention the city in the early second ...
, and a renowned collection of
Antioch mosaics
The Antioch mosaics are a grouping of over 300 mosaic floors created around the 3rd century AD, and discovered during archaeological excavations of Antioch (Antioch on the Orontes, in modern Turkey) between 1932 and 1939 by a consortium of five ...
.
Byzantine and Islamic art are an equally esteemed focus of the collection, with icons and jewelry from
sharing a gallery with pottery, metalwork, and glazed tiles from Egypt, Syria, and Iran.
In addition to works on display in the museum, a study gallery with hundreds of additional works is open to students and visitors.
File:Princeton University Art Museum - Hermaphroditus.jpg, Greek,
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
, ''Statuette of Hermaphrodite'', 2nd century B.C.
File:Relief with Menander and New Comedy Masks - Princeton Art Museum.jpg, Roman,
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
Menander
Menander (; grc-gre, Μένανδρος ''Menandros''; c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His rec ...
) with masks of
New Comedy
Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, an ...
'', 1st century B.C. – early 1st century A.D.
File:Mosaic pavement drinking contest of Herakles and Dionysos.jpg, Roman,
Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes (; grc-gre, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου, ''Antiókheia hē epì Oróntou'', Learned ; also Syrian Antioch) grc-koi, Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπ ...
,
mosaic
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...
pavement, ''Drinking contest of Herakles and Dionysos'', early 3rd century A.D.
File:Greek, Late Byzantine - The Archangel Gabriel, from an Annunciation scene on the King's Door of an iconostasis - Google Art Project.jpg, Greek, Late
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
, ''The Archangel
Gabriel
In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብር ...
, from an
Annunciation
The Annunciation (from Latin '), also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the biblical tale of the announcement by the ange ...
scene on the King's Door of an
iconostasis
In Eastern Christianity, an iconostasis ( gr, εἰκονοστάσιον) is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a Church (building), church. ''Iconostasis'' also refers to a portable icon stand t ...
'', second half of the 15th century
Pre-Columbian art
The collection of the art of the ancient Americas includes objects covering five thousand years of history, from the Arctic to Chile. The collection's primary focus is on small, portable works of art, typically ceramic or stone. Of particular note are the more than twenty prized polychrome ceramic works, the Classic Mayan Princeton Vase, and over thirty ceramic figurines, from the lowland
Maya
Maya may refer to:
Civilizations
* Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America
** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples
** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples
* Maya (Ethiopia), a populat ...
region. The collection of
Olmec
The Olmecs () were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization. Following a progressive development in Soconusco, they occupied the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that t ...
objects comprises smaller jade, serpentine, and ceramic works. Of the collection's works from
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
, the most notable are those from the
Mochica culture
The Moche civilization (; alternatively, the Mochica culture or the Early, Pre- or Proto-Chimú) flourished in northern Peru with its capital near present-day Moche, Trujillo, Peru from about 100 to 700 AD during the Regional Development Epoch. ...
, which flourished in Peru between 200 B.C. and A.D. 700. The museum's holdings in Native American art include important collections of Arctic Walrus carvings, art of the
Tlingit
The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),
people, and a growing representation from the
Mississippi Valley
The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it ...
and the
American Southwest
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, N ...
.
The collection of Pre-Columbian works began in the 19th century through the efforts of the Reverend
Sheldon Jackson
Sheldon Jackson (May 18, 1834 – May 2, 1909) was a Presbyterian minister, missionary, and political leader. During this career he travelled about one million miles (1.6 million km) and established more than one hundred missions and churches, ...
, an 1855 graduate of the
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a private school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1812 under the auspices of Archibald Alexander, the General Assembly of ...
. He donated a collection of Native American ethnographic objects to the Seminary, which transferred them to the university's E. M. Museum of Geology and Archaeology, then in 1909 to the Guyot Hall Museum, which, after its closure in 2000, gave them to the Art Museum. As with the art of Africa and
Oceania
Oceania (, , ) is a region, geographical region that includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Spanning the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of ...
, Indigenous American art was not a focus of the museum's historic collecting. Nonetheless, objects were steadily donated during the early decades of the museum, including in the Trumbull-Prime Collection and the donations of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. The collection of ancient American art received its proper attention following the 1967 appointment of Gillett G. Griffin as faculty curator, a position held by him until 2004. The current collection is largely the result of his efforts, both through his own collections and his influence on donors.
Asian art
The collection of Asian art began with the foundation of the museum, with the primary focus for the early decades being
Japanese art
Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ''ukiyo-e'' paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga and anime. It ...
. Major collections of
Chinese art
Chinese art is visual art that originated in or is practiced in China, Greater China or by Chinese artists. Art created by Chinese residing outside of China can also be considered a part of Chinese art when it is based in or draws on Chinese ...
were incorporated in the 1930s and 40s, including the snuff bottle collection of James A. Blair and paintings from Dubois Schanck Morris. The late 1950s brought significant additions of
Chinese ritual bronzes
Sets and individual examples of ritual bronzes survive from when they were made mainly during the Chinese Bronze Age. Ritual bronzes create quite an impression both due to their sophistication of design and manufacturing process, but also beca ...
and archaeological artifacts from J. Lionberger Davis, Class of 1900, as well as acquisitions from the Chester Dale and Dolly Carter Collection.
The primary strengths of the museum's collection are in Chinese and Japanese art, including
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
jade and pottery, ritual bronze vesslels, lacquerware, ceramics, sculpture and metalware, and woodblock prints. The museum's collection of calligraphy and painting is among the finest outside of Asia, including rare masterpieces from the
Song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...
Huang Tingjian
Huang Tingjian (; 1045–1105) was a Chinese calligrapher, painter, and poet of the Song dynasty. He is predominantly known as a calligrapher, and is also admired for his painting and poetry. He was one of the Four Masters of the Song Dynasty () ...
's ''Scroll for Zhang Datong''. The collection also has significant holdings in
Korean art
Korean arts include traditions in calligraphy, music, painting and pottery, often marked by the use of natural forms, surface decoration and bold colors or sounds.
The earliest examples of Korean art consist of Stone Age works dating from 3000 ...
, including a growing collection of artifacts ranging from the
Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Han dynasty#Eastern Han, Eastern Han dynasty and wa ...
period to the
Joseon dynasty
Joseon (; ; Middle Korean: 됴ᇢ〯션〮 Dyǒw syéon or 됴ᇢ〯션〯 Dyǒw syěon), officially the Great Joseon (; ), was the last dynastic kingdom of Korea, lasting just over 500 years. It was founded by Yi Seong-gye in July 1392 and re ...
. The art of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Gandhara
Gandhāra is the name of an ancient region located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely in present-day north-west Pakistan and parts of south-east Afghanistan. The region centered around the Peshawar Vall ...
, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia are also represented, with the influence of Islam and Hinduism on the artistic traditions of the subcontinent represented through sculpture, statuettes, and painted miniatures.
File:Ni Zan(倪瓚) - Twin Trees by the South Bank (Annan shuangshu) - Google Art Project.jpg,
Ni Zan
Ni Zan (; 1301–1374) was a Chinese painter during the Yuan and early Ming periods. Along with Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, and Wang Meng, he is considered to be one of the Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty.
Life
Ni Zan was born into a wealth ...
(倪瓚), ''Twin Trees by the South Bank (Annan shuangshu)'', 1353
File:Japanese Poems from Ancient and Modern Times.jpg,
Hon'ami Kōetsu
Hon'ami Kōetsu ( ja, 本阿弥 光悦; 1558 – 27 February 1637) was a Japanese craftsman, potter, lacquerer, and calligrapher, whose work is generally considered to have inspired the founding of the Rinpa school of painting.
Robert Hug ...
, ''Selections from the New Collection of Japanese Poems from Ancient and Modern Times (Shinkokin wakashū) with Printed Designs of Plants and Animals'', before 1615
File:Japanese - Messenger of Love (Fumitsukai byōbu-e) - Google Art Project.jpg,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
ese, ''Messenger of Love (Fumitsukai byōbu-e)'', 1624 - 1644
Campus Collections
The Campus Collections comprise the multitude of paintings, sculptures, memorials, and monuments significant to the university's history and traditions. Central to the collection are the Princeton Portraits, numbering more than 600 paintings and sculptures which depict figures prominent in the history of the university. The portraits span the breadth of American history, including the landmark portrait, ''George Washington at the Battle of Princeton'', by
Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741 – February 22, 1827) was an American Painting, painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolu ...
. Washington himself provided the funds for the work. Another highlight is the series of paintings by renowned sculpture and natural history artist
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (8 February 1807 – 27 January 1894) was an English sculptor and natural history artist renowned for his work on the life-size models of dinosaurs in the Crystal Palace Park in south London. The models, accurately ...
which depict dinosaurs and other prehistoric
fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoo ...
. The series was commissioned by Princeton president
James McCosh
James McCosh (April 1, 1811 – November 16, 1894) was a philosopher of the Scottish School of Common Sense. He was president of Princeton University 1868–88.
Biography
McCosh was born into a Covenanting family in Ayrshire, and ...
in 1876 as a progressive response to
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's theories.
The collection is also home to the celebrated Putnam Collection, which comprises 22 works by master artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The collection was the result of an anonymous donation in honor of a Princeton alumnus who died in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. It is commonly regarded as one of the greatest collections of public art, providing a ''plein-air'' lesson in art history. Among the highlights of the collection are ''
Oval with Points
''Oval with Points'' is a series of enigmatic abstract sculptures by British sculptor Henry Moore, made in plaster and bronze from 1968 to 1970, from a maquette in 1968 (LH 594) made in plaster and then cast in bronze, through a working model in ...
'' by
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...
and ''Five Disks: One Empty'' by
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his ...
Saint George and the Dragon
In a legend, Saint Georgea soldier venerated in Christianitydefeats a dragon. The story goes that the dragon originally extorted tribute from villagers. When they ran out of livestock and trinkets for the dragon, they started giving up a human tr ...
on Princeton's Henry Hall. Calder's work was responsible for an accident during its installation where two men were killed after the sculpture was dropped on them due to a crane collapse. Another highlight of the Putnam collection is
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
's ''Head of a Woman'', which was designed by Picasso in 1962, though assembled by
Carl Nesjar
Carl Nesjar (né Carlsen; 6 July 1920 – 23 May 2015) was a Norwegian painter, sculptor and graphic artist. He is best known for his collaborations with Pablo Picasso; serving for nearly twenty years as Picasso's chosen fabricator — the artis ...
in 1971.
File:Netscher, Caspar, William III, King of England, Prince of Orange and Nassau (1650–1702), ca. 1672–89.jpg,
Caspar Netscher
Caspar (or Gaspar) Netscher (1639 – January 15, 1684) was a Dutch portrait and genre painter. He was a master in depicting oriental rugs, silk and brocade and introduced an international style to the Northern Netherlands.
Life
According to ...
, '' William III, King of England, Prince of Orange and Nassau (1650–1702)'', ca. 1672–89, after whom the name
Nassau Hall
Nassau Hall, colloquially known as Old Nassau, is the oldest building at Princeton University in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. In 1783 it served as the United States Capitol building for four months. At the time it was built ...
and the color orange to represent Princeton were chosen
File:Kneller, Godfrey, George II, King of England (1683-1760), ca. 1727-32.jpg, After Sir
Godfrey Kneller
Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet (born Gottfried Kniller; 8 August 1646 – 19 October 1723), was the leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was court painter to Kingdom of England, English and Br ...
, ''
George II George II or 2 may refer to:
People
* George II of Antioch (seventh century AD)
* George II of Armenia (late ninth century)
* George II of Abkhazia (916–960)
* Patriarch George II of Alexandria (1021–1051)
* George II of Georgia (1072–1089)
* ...
, King of England (1683-1760)'', ca. 1727–32, the monarch who issued the
letters patent
Letters patent ( la, litterae patentes) ( always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, titl ...
establishing the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University
File:Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins Pleistocene Fauna of Asia.jpg,
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (8 February 1807 – 27 January 1894) was an English sculptor and natural history artist renowned for his work on the life-size models of dinosaurs in the Crystal Palace Park in south London. The models, accurately ...
, ''
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
Fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoo ...
of Asia'', 1876, part of the series commissioned by
James McCosh
James McCosh (April 1, 1811 – November 16, 1894) was a philosopher of the Scottish School of Common Sense. He was president of Princeton University 1868–88.
Biography
McCosh was born into a Covenanting family in Ayrshire, and ...
in response to the new theory of
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
File:Elizabeth Allen Marquand.jpg,
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...
, ''Elizabeth Allen Marquand'', 1887, mother of the museum's first director, Allan Marquand
File:Holzer, J. A., Homeric Story (center detail), 1894.jpg,
Jacob Adolphus Holzer
Jacob Adolphus Holzer (1858–1938) was a Swiss-born designer, muralist, mosaicist, interior designer, and sculptor who was associated with both John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens before he left to direct the mosaic workshops of Louis Com ...
, ''Homeric Story'', 1894, center detail of the mosaic in
Alexander Hall
Alexander Hall (January 11, 1894 – July 30, 1968) was an American film director, film editor and theatre actor.
Biography
Hall acted in the theatre from the age of four through 1914, when he began to work in silent movies. Following his milit ...
, depicting
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
seated at center with
Mentor
Mentorship is the influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and p ...
,
Helen
Helen may refer to:
People
* Helen of Troy, in Greek mythology, the most beautiful woman in the world
* Helen (actress) (born 1938), Indian actress
* Helen (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name)
Places
* Helen, ...
, and
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
on the right and
Telemachus
Telemachus ( ; grc, Τηλέμαχος, Tēlemakhos, lit=far-fighter), in Greek mythology, is the son of Odysseus and Penelope, who is a central character in Homer's ''Odyssey''. When Telemachus reached manhood, he visited Pylos and Sparta in se ...
,
Penelope
Penelope ( ; Ancient Greek: Πηνελόπεια, ''Pēnelópeia'', or el, Πηνελόπη, ''Pēnelópē'') is a character in Homer's ''Odyssey.'' She was the queen of Ithaca and was the daughter of Spartan king Icarius and naiad Periboea. Pe ...
,
Odysseus
Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysse ...
, and
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's ''Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, k ...
on the left
European art
The collection of
European art
The art of Europe, or Western art, encompasses the history of art, history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock art, rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the ...
covers nearly nine hundred years, from the twelfth century to the 20th. The strengths of the museum's holdings within this broad spectrum often reflect the Department of Art and Archaeology's curriculum, though with many unexpected treasures, due to the interests of donors.
The collection of
medieval art
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at certain periods in Western Asia and Northern Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, gen ...
is primarily the result of museum purchases, demonstrating the techniques and materials of artists, as well as the secular and spiritual uses of their work. Among the collection of stained glass is a window from
Chartres Cathedral
Chartres Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres (french: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres), is a Roman Catholic church in Chartres, France, about southwest of Paris, and is the seat of the Bishop of Chartres. Mostly con ...
, and the collection of medieval sculpture includes a ''
gisant
A tomb effigy, usually a recumbent effigy or, in French, ''gisant'' (French, "lying"), is a sculpted figure on a tomb monument depicting in effigy the deceased. These compositions were developed in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, and ...
'' of a Spanish knight. Other strengths are polychrome sculpture from Spain and Germany; French, German, and Italian metalwork; and enamels and ivories from France.
Notable in the early modern collection are the rare thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian
gold-ground painting
Gold ground (both a noun and adjective) or gold-ground (adjective) is a term in art history for a style of images with all or most of the background in a solid gold colour. Historically, real gold leaf has normally been used, giving a luxurious ...
s from
Siena
Siena ( , ; lat, Sena Iulia) is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.
The city is historically linked to commercial and banking activities, having been a major banking center until the 13th and 14th centuri ...
including works by
Fra Angelico
Fra Angelico (born Guido di Pietro; February 18, 1455) was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Vasari in his '' Lives of the Artists'' as having "a rare and perfect talent".Giorgio Vasari, ''Lives of the Artists''. Pengu ...
,
Francesco Traini
Francesco Traini was an Italian painter who was documented as working from 1321 to ''ca'' 1365 in Pisa and Bologna.
He appears to have been a follower of Andrea Orcagna to judge by only one work known to be by Traini: in 1345 he signed and da ...
, and
Guido da Siena
Guido of Siena, was an Italian painter, active during the 13th-century in Siena, and painting in an Italo-Byzantine style.
Biography
The name Guido is known from the large panel in the church of San Domenico, Siena of th''Virgin and Child Enth ...
. The museum is home to an unusual group of Dutch
Mannerist
Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...
paintings from around 1600, including works by
Hendrik Goltzius
Hendrick Goltzius, or Hendrik, (; ; January or February 1558 – 1 January 1617) was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, or Northern Mannerism, lauded for his ...
and
Abraham Bloemaert
Abraham Bloemaert (25 December 1566 – 27 January 1651) was a Dutch painter and printmaker in etching and engraving. He was initially working in the style of the " Haarlem Mannerists", but in the 16th century altered his style in line with the ...
, the richest of its kind in an American museum.
Baroque art
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including th ...
is represented by
Pietro da Cortona
Pietro da Cortona (; 1 November 1596 or 159716 May 1669) was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman ...
and
Giovanni Battista Gaulli
Giovanni Battista Gaulli (8 May 1639 – 2 April 1709), also known as Baciccio or Baciccia (Genoese nicknames for ''Giovanni Battista''), was an Italian artist working in the High Baroque and early Rococo periods. He is best known for his grand ...
. Notable
rococo
Rococo (, also ), less commonly Roccoco or Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and theatrical style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, ...
François Boucher
François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories ...
.
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
paintings include works by
Angelica Kauffman
Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann ( ; 30 October 1741 – 5 November 1807), usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, K ...
,
Francisco de Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...
, and the studio of
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David (; 30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was a French painter in the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s, his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in ...
.
The nineteenth-century collection consists of works from the
Age of Revolution
The Age of Revolution is a period from the late-18th to the mid-19th centuries during which a number of significant revolutionary movements occurred in most of Europe and the Americas. The period is noted for the change from absolutist monarc ...
and Industrial Age which trace academic traditions and preparatory processes. Themes represented include the rise of
Landscape painting
Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compos ...
, the human figure, the collecting of small sculpture, and the successive cultural and stylistic waves— revival styles,
Orientalism
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. In particular, Orientalist p ...
,
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...
Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The ran ...
,
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
,
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
, and
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Born ...
.
Early-twentieth-century modernist movements are represented by works by
Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon (born Bertrand Redon; ; 20 April 18406 July 1916) was a French Symbolism (arts), symbolist painter, printmaker, Drawing, draughtsman and pastellist.
Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he ...
,
Gabriele Münter
Gabriele Münter (19 February 1877 – 19 May 1962) was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding mem ...
, and Russian master
Ilya Repin
Ilya Yefimovich Repin (russian: Илья Ефимович Репин, translit=Il'ya Yefimovich Repin, p=ˈrʲepʲɪn); fi, Ilja Jefimovitš Repin ( – 29 September 1930) was a Russian painter, born in what is now Ukraine. He became one of the ...
, whose paintings are rare outside his homeland. The museum continues to expand its collection of twentieth-century art, allowing visitors and students to assess the European contribution to
Modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
Post-Impressionist
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
art on loan to the museum, including masterpieces by
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
,
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
,
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the ...
, and
Chaïm Soutine
Chaïm Soutine (13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a Belarusian painter who made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living and working in Paris.
Inspired by classic painting in the European tradition, exemplified by the ...
.
File:Guido da Siena - Annunciation - Google Art Project.jpg,
Guido da Siena
Guido of Siena, was an Italian painter, active during the 13th-century in Siena, and painting in an Italo-Byzantine style.
Biography
The name Guido is known from the large panel in the church of San Domenico, Siena of th''Virgin and Child Enth ...
, ''
Annunciation
The Annunciation (from Latin '), also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the biblical tale of the announcement by the ange ...
'', 1262-1279
File:The Four Evangelists (Abraham Bloemaert).jpg,
Abraham Bloemaert
Abraham Bloemaert (25 December 1566 – 27 January 1651) was a Dutch painter and printmaker in etching and engraving. He was initially working in the style of the " Haarlem Mannerists", but in the 16th century altered his style in line with the ...
, ''The Four Evangelists'', ca. 1612-1615
File:Angelica Kauffmann - Portrait of Sarah Harrop (Mrs. Bates) as a Muse - Google Art Project.jpg,
Angelica Kauffmann
Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann ( ; 30 October 1741 – 5 November 1807), usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, K ...
, ''Portrait of Sarah Harrop (Mrs. Bates) as a Muse'', ca. 1780–81
File:Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes - Monk Talking to an Old Woman - Google Art Project.jpg,
Francisco de Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...
, ''Monk Talking to an Old Woman'', 1824-25
Modern and contemporary art
The Department of Modern and Contemporary Art encompasses works created throughout the world between 1870 and the present, including painting, sculpture, video, and performance. The systematic collection of modern works began in the late 1940s, with many key pieces received as alumni gifts or bequests. The collection includes an important group of late landscapes by
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
as well as an enigmatic painting by Édouard Manet, found in his studio after his death. Twentieth-century
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
is represented by a small but stellar group of works by artists including
Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon (born Bertrand Redon; ; 20 April 18406 July 1916) was a French Symbolism (arts), symbolist painter, printmaker, Drawing, draughtsman and pastellist.
Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he ...
,
Vasily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...
,
Gabriele Münter
Gabriele Münter (19 February 1877 – 19 May 1962) was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. She studied and lived with the painter Wassily Kandinsky and was a founding mem ...
,
Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde (born Hans Emil Hansen; 7 August 1867 – 13 April 1956) was a German-Danish painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and was one of the first oil painting and watercolor painters of th ...
,
Max Ernst
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German (naturalised American in 1948 and French in 1958) painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism ...
,
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
,
Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 – January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (, ), was a French surrealist painter.
Biography
Tanguy, the son of a retired navy captain, was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Affa ...
, and
Jean Arp
Hans Peter Wilhelm Arp (16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966), better known as Jean Arp in English, was a German-French sculptor, painter, and poet. He was known as a Dadaist and an abstract artist.
Early life
Arp was born in Straßburg (now Stras ...
. A rare late work by
Ilya Repin
Ilya Yefimovich Repin (russian: Илья Ефимович Репин, translit=Il'ya Yefimovich Repin, p=ˈrʲepʲɪn); fi, Ilja Jefimovitš Repin ( – 29 September 1930) was a Russian painter, born in what is now Ukraine. He became one of the ...
is among his most important works outside his native Russia.
One of most important works in the museum's
postwar
In Western usage, the phrase post-war era (or postwar era) usually refers to the time since the end of World War II. More broadly, a post-war period (or postwar period) is the interval immediately following the end of a war. A post-war period ...
collection is
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...
's ''Black Friday'', from his breakthrough exhibition in 1948. Other artists represented in the strong collection of postwar art include
Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City a ...
,
Lee Bontecou
Lee Bontecou (January 15, 1931 – November 8, 2022) was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Bont ...
,
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933 – November 29, 1996) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.
Early life and career
Daniel Nicholas Flavin ...
,
Yayoi Kusama
is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes ...
,
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.
LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...
,
Morris Louis
Morris Louis Bernstein (November 28, 1912 – September 7, 1962), known professionally as Morris Louis, was an American painter. During the 1950s he became one of the earliest exponents of Color Field painting. While living in Washington, D.C ...
,
Ad Reinhardt
Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an abstract painter active in New York for more than three decades. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the movement center ...
,
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler (born 1943) is an American artist. She is a conceptual artist who works in photography and photo text, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler's work is centered on everyday ...
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and m ...
,
Frank Stella
Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City.
Biography
Frank Stella was born in M ...
, and
Hannah Wilke
Hannah Wilke (born Arlene Hannah Butter; March 7, 1940 – January 28, 1993) was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Wilke's work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity.
B ...
, among others. The museum's holding in Pop art are particularly strong, including works by
George Segal
George Segal Jr. (February 13, 1934 – March 23, 2021) was an American actor. He became popular in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles. After first rising to prominence with roles in acclaimed films such as ''Ship o ...
,
Tom Wesselmann
Thomas K. Wesselmann (February 23, 1931 – December 17, 2004) was an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture.
Early years
Wesselmann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati.
From 1949 ...
, and
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
. The museum renewed its commitment to contemporary art in 2008, with priority given to works that make significant contributions to the field and exemplify the pressing cultural, social, and philosophical issues of their day. Recent acquisitions include artwork by
Doug Aitken
Doug Aitken (born 1968) is an American artist. Aitken's body of work ranges from photography, print media, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to narrative films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, installations, and live perf ...
Polly Apfelbaum
Polly E. Apfelbaum (born Abington, Pennsylvania 1955) is an American contemporary visual artist, who is primarily known for her colorful drawings, sculptures, and fabric floor pieces, which she refers to as "fallen paintings".Sanford Biggers
Sanford Biggers (born 1970 in Los Angeles) is a Harlem-based interdisciplinary artist who works in film/video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance.
,
Ellen Gallagher
Ellen Gallagher (born December 16, 1965) is an American artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of many major museums. Her media include painting, works on paper, film and ...
,
Wade Guyton
Wade Guyton (born 1972) is an American post-conceptual artist who among other things makes digital paintings on canvas using scanners and digital inkjet technology.
Early life and education
Guyton was born in Hammond, Indiana, in 1972, and grew ...
,
Matthew Day Jackson
Matthew Day Jackson (born 1974) is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, painting, collage, photography, drawing, video, performance and installation. Since graduating with an MFA from Rutgers University in 2001, ...
,
Wangechi Mutu
Wangechi Mutu (born 1972) is a Kenyan-born American visual artist, known primarily for her painting, sculpture, film, and performance work.Javier Téllez.
File:Édouard Manet - Gitane avec une cigarette.jpg,
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Born ...
, ''Gypsy with a Cigarette'', before 1883
File:Gauguin, Paul, Figures in an Interior, ca. 1890.jpg,
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...
, ''Figures in an interior'', ca. 1890
File:Redon, Odilon, Apparition, 1905-10.jpg,
Odilon Redon
Odilon Redon (born Bertrand Redon; ; 20 April 18406 July 1916) was a French Symbolism (arts), symbolist painter, printmaker, Drawing, draughtsman and pastellist.
Early in his career, both before and after fighting in the Franco-Prussian War, he ...
, ''Apparition'', 1905–10
File:1914, Henri, Robert, Mildred Clarke von Kienbusch.jpg,
Robert Henri
Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher.
As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...
, ''Mildred Clarke von Kienbusch'', 1914
File:George Bellows - California Headlands (1917).jpg,
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows (August 12 or August 19, 1882 – January 8, 1925) was an American realism, American realist painting, painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City. He became, according to the Columbus Museum of Art ...
, ''California Headlands'', 1917
Photography
Princeton's photography collection is one of the leading museum collections in the United States. The start of the collection was the 1949 gift by retired director Frank Jewett Mather Jr. of
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...
's landmark image ''
The Steerage
''The Steerage'' is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. It has been hailed as one of the greatest photographs of all time because it captures in a single image both a formative document of its time and one of the first ...
''. The decisive moment for the medium at Princeton came in 1971 when
David Hunter McAlpin
David Hunter McAlpin (1816–1901) was a prominent industrialist and real estate owner in New York City. He owned the D.H. McAlpin Tobacco Company. Among his children were a Civil War General and a prominent physician.
Early life
David Hunter ...
, Class of 1920, made a donation of his collection of 457 prints. McAlpin was a friend and patron to two generations of American photographers, donating significant representations of the work of Stieglitz,
Paul Strand
Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. ...
,
Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American artist known for his Precisionist paintings, commercial photography, and the avant-garde film, ''Manhatta'', which he made in collaboration with Paul Strand. Sheeler is recognized ...
,
Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advoca ...
, Wynn Bullock, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and Eliot Porter, among others. McAlpin also established a fund which has enabled, over time, the purchase of some 400 photographs, including work by Hill & Adamson, László Moholy-Nagy and William Henry Fox Talbot.
In 1972, Peter C. Bunnell, later museum director, was hired as the David H. McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art, making Princeton the first American university, and one of only a few worldwide, where photography was taught within the art history curriculum. In his nearly thirty years at Princeton, he went on to build one of the foremost graduate programs in the field and to build one of the most notable teaching collections of historical photographs. The construction of the McAlpin Study Center during the expansion of the museum in 1989 created a space for seminars to be taught using original works from the collection.
The collection includes work covering all major movements and historical trends. Particular strengths include nineteenth-century British photography, French photographs of the 1850s-1870s, and Japanese and American postwar photography. The museum has major holdings in Pictorialism, anchored by the Clarence H. White collection and the archives of his eponymous school of photography. In 1976, Minor White bequeathed to the museum his negatives, library, correspondence, and close to 20,000 prints of his own and other artists. Other archives held by the museum include those of
Ruth Bernhard
Ruth Bernhard (October 14, 1905 – December 18, 2006) was a German-born American photographer.
Early life and education
Bernhard was born in Berlin to Lucian Bernhard and Gertrude Hoffmann. Lucian Bernhard was known for his poster and typeface ...
and William B. Dyer.
File:Brig on the Water.jpg, Gustave Le Gray, ''Brig on the Water'', 1856
File:View from Inspiration Point.jpg, Carleton Watkins, ''Yosemite Valley, View from Inspiration Point'', 1879
File:Hine, Lewis, Adolescent Girl, a Spinner, in a Carolina Cotton Mill, 1908.jpg, Lewis W. Hine, ''Adolescent Girl, a Spinner, in a Carolina Cotton Mill'', 1908
Prints and drawings
The collection of Prints and Drawings includes 15,000 works on paper as well as a small number of Illuminated manuscripts, by artists from the fourteenth century to the present. Notable areas of strength include Old master print, old master and nineteenth-century European
prints
In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...
, Italian and Spanish
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
and
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
drawings, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and British drawings, Watercolor painting, watercolors, and sketchbooks, a selection of Indian and Persian Persian miniature, miniature painting, and a large collection of modern and contemporary Latin American works on paper.
The print collection began with the large bequest of Junius Spencer Morgan II, Junius Spencer Morgan, Class of 1888, in 1932, which included old master engravings and etchings, primarily by the notable seventeenth-century printmakers
Hendrik Goltzius
Hendrick Goltzius, or Hendrik, (; ; January or February 1558 – 1 January 1617) was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, or Northern Mannerism, lauded for his ...
, Jacques Callot, and Stefano della Bella. In 1938, another bequest, by Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895, laid the foundation of the collection of drawings, with works from the sixteenth to early twentieth centuries, including notable groups by Guercino, Salvator Rosa, Giovanni Battista and Domenico Tiepolo, and George Romney (painter), George Romney. Frank Jewett Mather Jr., the museum's second director, made numerous purchases in the 1940s, including Italian Renaissance drawings, works on paper by Samuel Palmer, and watercolors by John Marin, and
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
. In 1945, Professor Clifton R. Hall bequeathed his collection of old master prints and American watercolors, including three masterpieces by Edward Hopper. Hall also established an endowment for the Department of Art and Archaeology specifically for the purchase of works on paper, which has enabled the purchase of an exceptional collection of sixteenth- through eighteenth-century Spanish drawings.
Professor Felton Gibbons, following Hall's example, endowed a fund for acquiring works on paper that has allowed gaps in the collection to be filled, including Northern and Central European drawings, and to add to other areas of significance, such as German Expressionism. The modern and contemporary holdings continue to grow, with an emphasis on artists such as Glenn Ligon, Martin Puryear, Robert Rauschenberg, and Kiki Smith, who are a vital part of the teaching curriculum of the university.
File:The Engraved Passion.jpg, Albrecht Dürer, ''The Engraved Passion'', 1507–1512, engraving
File:Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves (The Three Crosses).jpg, Rembrandt van Rijn, ''Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves (The Three Crosses)'', 1653–1655, drypoint and Burin (engraving), burin, fourth of five states plate
File:Gauguin, Paul, The Universe is Created (L'Univers est créé), from the Noa Noa suite, 1893–94.jpg,
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...
, ''The Universe is Created'', from the Noa Noa suite, 1893–4, woodcut printed in black on thin rose-colored wove paper sheet trimmed to block
File:Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - The Jockey - Google Art Project (28212228).jpg,
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the ...
, ''The Jockey'', 1899, chromolithography, color lithograph
File:Luçon Master, Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1405.jpg, Luçon Master, ''Adoration of the Magi'', ca. 1405, tempera and gold leaf on parchment
File:1530, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Bust of a Youth and Caricature Head of an Old Man, Both in Left Profile.jpg, Michelangelo Buonarroti, ''Bust of a Youth and Caricature Head of an Old Man, Both in Left Profile'', ca. 1530, black chalk on tan laid paper
File:Guercino, Boy in a Large Hat, 1630s-40s.jpg, Guercino, ''Boy in a Large Hat'', 1630s-40s, pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash on beige laid paper
File:Winslow Homer - Eastern Point Light - Google Art Project.jpg, Winslow Homer, ''Eastern Point Light'', 1880, Watercolor painting, watercolor over graphite on wove paper (cream-colored wove paper)
File:Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet, Looking Down.jpg, Mary Cassatt, ''Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet'', 1890, pastel on tan wove paper
File:Universalist Church (Edward Hopper, 1926).jpg, Edward Hopper, ''Universalist Church'', 1926
Private Collections on long-term loan
Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection
Henry Pearlman started his collection with the 1945 purchase, for $825, of
Chaïm Soutine
Chaïm Soutine (13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a Belarusian painter who made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living and working in Paris.
Inspired by classic painting in the European tradition, exemplified by the ...
's ''View of Céret'', seen in the window of the Parke-Bernet auction house while walking down Park Avenue. Pearlman had made his fortune through founding the Eastern Cold Storage Insulation Corporation in 1919 and knew little of Soutine or contemporary art at the time he started collecting. He would go on to amass more than fifty masterworks of late 19th- to mid-20th-century avant-garde European art, one of the most distinguished private collections of
modern art
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the tradi ...
in the United States. Among the most notable works are
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...
's ''Mont Sainte-Victoire (Cézanne), Mont Sainte-Victoire'',
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
's ''Tarascon Stagecoach'', and
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
's portrait of ''Jean Cocteau''.
The heart of the collection is the finest and best preserved collection of watercolors by Cézanne in the world, sixteen works including ''Three Pears'', which was fought over by Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, with Degas as the victor, at Cézanne's first sale. In addition to the thirty-three works by Cézanne, including the watercolors, six oil paintings, six prints, and five drawings, the collection boasts seven paintings by Soutine, two each by Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, and one each by van Gogh, Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley,
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
, Honoré Daumier,
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
Born ...
, Maurice Utrillo, and Maurice Prendergast. Sculpture is represented through works by
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...
, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jacques Lipchitz, and Amedeo Modigliani, who is also represented by two oil paintings and one drawing. The one exception to the modern focus of the collection is an engraving by Albrecht Dürer, ''Adam and Eve''. Henry Pearlman himself is represented by a bust by Giacomo Manzu and a portrait by Oskar Kokoschka.
The collection has been much exhibited, including an international tour in 2014-16 which included the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, where it was the museum's most popular exhibition on record, the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada, ending at the Princeton University Art Museum, where the collection has been on long-term loan since 1976.
File:1888, Cézanne, Three Pears.jpg, Paul Cézanne, ''Three Pears'', ca. 1888-90
File:Van Gogh - Die Postkutsche nach Tarascon.jpeg,
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...
, ''The Stagecoach to Tarascon'', 1888
File:1890, Degas, After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself.jpg, Edgar Degas, ''After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself'', 1890s
File:1916, Modigliani, Jean Cocteau.jpg,
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (, ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and ...
The Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection
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