Princeton University Art Museum

Established	1882
Type	Art Museum
Collection size	117,000
Visitors	200,000[1]
Director	James Christen Steward
Public transit access	Princeton (NJT station)
Nearest parking	Nassau Street, Spring Street Parking Garage
Website	artmuseum.princeton.edu
McCormick Hall (1923)
U.S. Historic district Contributing property
Location	McCormick Hall,Princeton,New Jersey
Coordinates	40°20′49.9″N74°39′28.9″W / 40.347194°N 74.658028°W /40.347194; -74.658028
Built	1923
Architect	Ralph Adams Cram
Architectural style	Venetian Gothic
Part of	Princeton Historic District (ID75001143[2])
Designated CP	27 June 1975

ThePrinceton University Art Museum (PUAM) is thePrinceton University gallery of art, located inPrinceton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 117,000 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 inAntioch. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the earlyRenaissance 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 ofdaguerreotype 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.^[3]

A new building for the museum has been constructed on the same site over the course of four years starting in 2021 withDavid Adjaye serving as architect.^[4] Demolition of the former facility began in June 2021; construction of the 145,000 square foot facility began late that year. The Museum will reopen on October 31, 2025, with a 24-hour open house to commemorate the occasion.

The Princeton University Art Museum is part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched in 2021 by theMonuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.^[5] Several "monuments men" are alumni ofPrinceton University.

The first art work owned and displayed by the College of New Jersey (renamed Princeton University in 1896) was a full-length portrait ofJonathan Belcher, thegovernor 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 builtNassau Hall. It was joined by a portrait of KingGeorge II, who had issued theletters patent establishing the college. The two portraits hung in the central prayer hall, and were displayed alongside variousantiquities and objects ofnatural history. The two paintings were destroyed during the 1777Battle 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.^[6]

The creation of the Art Museum in a more formal sense took place under the leadership ofJames McCosh, 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 chargedWilliam Cowper Prime, a Princeton alumnus and founding trustee of theMetropolitan Museum of Art, andGeorge B. McClellan, theCivil War general and thengovernor of New Jersey, 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 [the] opinion 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.^[6]

The museum, and what is now the Department of Art and Archaeology, were formally created in 1882, withAllan Marquand, 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 ofHenry Gurdon Marquand, 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 professorArnold Henry Guyot, part of which is still on display in Guyot Hall. A new purpose-built fireproofRomanesque Revival Museum was designed byA. Page Brown 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 ofEtruscan, 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 fromEdward Harkness.^[8]

Frank Jewett Mather 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 andprints, including the 1933 bequest of several thousand objects byJunius Spencer Morgan II, of the Princeton Class of 1888. In 1923, the first of many expansions of the Art Museum was completed with the addition of theVenetian Gothic McCormick Hall, designed byRalph Adams Cram and donated by the family ofCyrus McCormick, Jr., Class of 1879 andHarold Fowler McCormick, 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 fromClassical andPre-Columbian antiquities, toilluminated manuscripts, and what became one of the finest collections ofAmerican 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 500snuff bottles, still one of the finest such collections in the country, from Colonel James A. Blair, Class of 1903. The decade also saw significant collections ofChinese andJapanese art added to support the courses of George Rowley, the first in those fields in an American university. TheWorld War II years ushered in the first classes in American art.

Notable exhibitions during Mather's tenure included one of works byPaul Cézanne, borrowed fromDuncan Philips, and one of highlights from theMuseum of Modern Art. Before his retirement in 1946, he oversaw a massive influx ofAntioch mosaics from thearchaeological digs atAntioch-on-the-Orontes 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 inFirestone Library. He also welcomed the collection ofDan Fellows Platt, a massive assortment of fine objects which arrived by van during the war.^[9]

Mather was succeeded by Ernest DeWald, a graduate school alumnus of the Class of 1946, one of theMonuments Men 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 theKunsthistorisches Museum inVienna to loan the museumThe Art of Painting byJohannes Vermeer as a sign of gratitude. DeWald was noted for hisconservation work, personally cleaning paintings in his office on the top floor of the museum. For the university's bicentennial in 1946, he refurbished the galleries, including displaying a new collection ofChinese scrolls andpaintings 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's 1907The Steerage was the first of the museum's now considerable collection of photographs.^[10]

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 millioncapital campaign. 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 thePutnam 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 includingAlfred H. Barr, Jr. andThomas Hoving. It contains works by seventeen major twentieth century sculptors, includingAlexander Calder,Pablo Picasso,Henry Moore,Louise Nevelson,Isamu Noguchi,David Smith, andTony Smith.^[12]

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 byPeter Bunnell, who would go on to succeed Kelleher as director in 1973.^[13]

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 includingClarence Hudson White,Minor White, andRuth Bernhard. In 1980, Allen Rosenbaum became director, focusing on expanding the museums collection ofOld Masters, notablyRenaissance andBaroque paintings in theMannerist tradition. In 1989, Rosenbaum oversaw another expansion of the museum's physical plant, the 27,000 square feet (2,500 m²)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, presides over a collection of more than 117,000 objects, supplemented by notable collections on long-term loan, including works ofmodern art from theSonnabend Collection and perhaps the finest collection of paintings byJean-Michel Basquiat, on loan from Herbert Schorr, Graduate School Class of 1963, and his wife, Lenore.^[14]

In 2015 the museum was listed byFodor's as one of the top 15 United States museums located in a small-town, further described as "one of the best university art museums in the world."^[15]

In 2020, architectDavid Adjaye, his firm Adjaye Associates, and executive architects Cooper Robertson were commissioned to design 144,000 square feet (13,400 square metres) a wholly new facility, which is set to double the museum in size.^[16] 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.^[17] 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.^[16] Construction on the new museum began in summer 2021, and is projected to finish by spring 2025.^[18]

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. In late 2021, the museum opened a second, interim gallery space known as Art on Hulfish, largely dedicated to photography and time-based media, which it operated until January 2025, closing it in anticipation of the new museum's opening later in the year.

The collection ofAfrican art 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 theDemocratic Republic of the Congo, and includes a distinctively shapedKuba box and a rare double caryatid headrest from theChokwe people. 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 theCross River region. A 1998 bequest of John B. Elliot includes many objects of daily use and adornment, as well asAkan gold pieces, from a linguist's staff to a chief's bracelet. In 2003, aYoruba stool was acquired, considered a sculptural masterpiece that served as the focus of devotion to the godEsu.

The African art collection has grown steadfastly as an area of growing interest^[20] over the past twenty years, particularly since the appointment in 1997 of Princeton's first professor of African art history, Chika Okeke-Agulu, and the naming in 2022 of its first curator of African art, Perrin Lathrop.

Media related toAfrican art in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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 theHudson River School.

TheBoudinot 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 nearbyMorven Museum and Garden, whose original owners, theStockton family, were relatives of the Boudinots. Alumnus Edward Duff Balken's donation ofFolk art 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, notablystill life,genre painting, works by native makers, and African American art.^[22]

Media related toAmerican art in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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  John Singleton Copley,Elkanah Watson, 1782.^[23] The ship in the background represents the departure to America of the acknowledgement of the independence of the United States.^[24]
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  Asher Brown Durand,Landscape, 1859, part of theHudson River School^[25]
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  William Merritt Chase,Landscape: Shinnecock, Long Island, ca. 1896
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  Charles Rohlfs,Tall Back Chair, ca. 1898–99^[26]
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  Thomas Eakins,Portrait of Charles Percival Buck, 1904
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  Childe Hassam,Rainy Day, Fifth Avenue, 1916, part of hisFlag series^[27]

Ancient art has played a central role in the museum's collection since its beginning. The first major addition to the collection included manyEtruscan vases, as well as those fromEgypt,Greece, andRome. There are now more than 5,000 objects in the collection, documenting the early civilizations ofMesopotamia, Iran,Asia Minor, and theLevant. The great diversity of artifacts also covers the various eras of ancient Egypt, from pottery to stonereliefs, amulets, wall paintings, bronze statuettes, and mummies. The Greek collection includes significant works of bothblack-figure andred-figure pottery, including the vase used to identify thePrinceton Painter. It spans the broad range of artistic work, fromArchaic bronze statuettes toterracotta figurines, jewelry to funerary reliefs, pottery fromRhodes,Cyprus, andCorinth.

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, carved bone, coins, statuettes, and a spectacular silver-gilt wine cup. The university's heritage of archaeological work inRoman Syria has left a legacy of basalt sculptures fromHauran, funerary reliefs fromPalmyra, and a renowned collection ofAntioch mosaics.

Byzantine and Islamic art are an equally esteemed focus of the collection, with icons and jewelry fromConstantinople sharing a gallery with pottery, metalwork, and glazed tiles from Egypt, Syria, and Iran.

Media related toAncient, Byzantine, and Islamic art in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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  Greek,Hellenistic,Statuette of Hermaphrodite, 2nd century B.C.
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  Roman,Republican orEarly Imperial,Relief of a seated poet (Menander) with masks ofNew Comedy, 1st century B.C. – early 1st century A.D.
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  Roman,Antioch,mosaic pavement,Drinking contest of Herakles and Dionysos, early 3rd century A.D.
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  Greek, LateByzantine,The ArchangelGabriel, from anAnnunciation scene on the King's Door of aniconostasis, second half of the 15th century

The collection ofthe 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 MayanPrinceton Vase, and over thirty ceramic figurines, from the lowlandMaya region. The collection ofOlmec objects comprises smaller jade,serpentine, and ceramic works. Of the collection's works fromSouth America, the most notable are those from theMochica culture, which flourished in Peru between 200 B.C. and A.D. 700. The museum's holdings inNative American art include important collections of ArcticWalrus carvings, art of theTlingit people, and a growing representation from theMississippi Valley and theAmerican Southwest.

The collection of Pre-Columbian works began in the 19th century through the efforts of the ReverendSheldon Jackson, an 1855 graduate of thePrinceton Theological Seminary. 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 andOceania, 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 he held until 2004. The current collection is largely the result of his efforts, both through his own collections and his influence on donors.^[28]

Media related toArt of the Ancient Americas in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

The collection of Asian art began with the foundation of the museum, with the primary focus for the early decades beingJapanese art. Major collections ofChinese art were incorporated in the 1930s and 40s, including the snuff bottle collection of James A. Blair.Dubois Schanck Morris presented his collection of 460 paintings in 1947.^[31] The late 1950s brought significant additions ofChinese ritual bronzes 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, includingNeolithic 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 theSong andYuan dynasties such asHuang Tingjian'sScroll for Zhang Datong. The collection also has significant holdings inKorean art, including a growing collection of artifacts ranging from theThree Kingdoms period to theJoseon dynasty. The art ofIndia,Gandhara, 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.^[32]

Media related toAsian art in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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  Ni Zan(倪瓚),Twin Trees by the South Bank (Annan shuangshu), 1353
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  Hon'ami Kōetsu,Selections from the New Collection of Japanese Poems from Ancient and Modern Times (Shinkokin wakashū) with Printed Designs of Plants and Animals, before 1615
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  Japanese,Messenger of Love (Fumitsukai byōbu-e), 1624 - 1644

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 thePrinceton 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, byCharles Willson Peale. Washington himself provided the funds for the work. Another highlight is the series of paintings by renowned sculpture andnatural history artistBenjamin Waterhouse Hawkins which depict dinosaurs and other prehistoricfauna. The series was commissioned by Princeton presidentJames McCosh in 1876 as a progressive response toCharles Darwin's theories.

The collection is also home to the celebratedPutnam 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 inWorld War II. It is commonly regarded as one of the greatest collections of public art, providing aplein-air lesson in art history. Among the highlights of the collection areOval with Points byHenry Moore andFive Disks: One Empty byAlexander Calder,^[34] whose father,A. Stirling Calder, had previously created a statue ofSaint George and the Dragon on Princeton's Henry Hall.^[35] 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 isPablo Picasso'sHead of a Woman, which was designed by Picasso in 1962, though assembled byCarl Nesjar in 1971.^[36]

Media related toCampus Collections of Princeton University at Wikimedia Commons

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  Caspar Netscher,William III, King of England, Prince of Orange and Nassau (1650–1702), ca. 1672–89, after whom the nameNassau Hall and the color orange to represent Princeton were chosen^[37]
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  After SirGodfrey Kneller,George II, King of England (1683-1760), ca. 1727–32, the monarch who issued theletters patent establishing the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University^[38]
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  Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins,PleistoceneFauna of Asia, 1876, part of the series commissioned byJames McCosh in response to the new theory ofevolution
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  John Singer Sargent,Elizabeth Allen Marquand, 1887, mother of the museum's first director, Allan Marquand^[39]
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  Jacob Adolphus Holzer,Homeric Story, 1894, center detail of the mosaic inAlexander Hall, depictingHomer seated at center withMentor,Helen, andParis on the right andTelemachus,Penelope,Odysseus, andAchilles on the left

The collection ofEuropean art 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.^[41]

The collection ofmedieval art 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 fromChartres Cathedral,^[42] and the collection of medieval sculpture includes agisant of a Spanish knight.^[43] Other strengths arepolychrome sculpture from Spain and Germany; French, German, and Italian metalwork; andenamels andivories from France.

Notable in the early modern collection are the rare thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italiangold-ground paintings fromSiena including works byFra Angelico,Francesco Traini, andGuido da Siena. The museum is home to an unusual group of DutchMannerist paintings from around 1600, including works byHendrik Goltzius andAbraham Bloemaert, the richest of its kind in an American museum.Baroque art is represented byPietro da Cortona andGiovanni Battista Gaulli. Notablerococo masters includeJean-Siméon Chardin andFrançois Boucher.Age of Enlightenment paintings include works byAngelica Kauffman,Francisco de Goya, and the studio ofJacques-Louis David.^[42]

The nineteenth-century collection consists of works from theAge of Revolution andIndustrial Age which trace academic traditions and preparatory processes. Themes represented include the rise ofLandscape painting, the human figure, the collecting of small sculpture, and the successive cultural and stylistic waves—revival styles,Orientalism,Impressionism, and theArts and Crafts movement.^[41] Among the major artists represented areJean-Léon Gérôme,Gustave Courbet,Claude Monet, andÉdouard Manet.^[42]

Early-twentieth-century modernist movements are represented by works byOdilon Redon,Gabriele Münter, and Russian masterIlya Repin, 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 toModernism.^[41]

TheHenry and Rose Pearlman Foundation has placed its magnificent collection ofPost-Impressionist art on loan to the museum, including masterpieces byVincent van Gogh,Paul Cézanne,Amedeo Modigliani,Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, andChaïm Soutine.^[42]

Media related toEuropean art in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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  Guido da Siena,Annunciation, 1262-1279^[44]
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  Abraham Bloemaert,The Four Evangelists, ca. 1612-1615^[45]
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  Angelica Kauffmann,Portrait ofSarah Harrop (Mrs. Bates) as a Muse, ca. 1780–81
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  Francisco de Goya,Monk Talking to an Old Woman, 1824-25^[46]

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 byClaude Monet as well as an enigmatic painting by Édouard Manet, found in his studio after his death.^[48] Twentieth-centurymodernism is represented by a small but stellar group of works by artists includingOdilon Redon,Vasily Kandinsky,Gabriele Münter,Emil Nolde,Max Ernst,Pablo Picasso,Yves Tanguy, andJean Arp. A rare late work byIlya Repin is among his most important works outside his native Russia.

One of the most important works in the museum'spostwar collection isWillem de Kooning'sBlack Friday, from his breakthrough exhibition in 1948. Other artists represented in the strong collection of postwar art includeRomare Bearden,Lee Bontecou,Dan Flavin,Yayoi Kusama,Sol LeWitt,Morris Louis,Ad Reinhardt,Martha Rosler,David Smith,Robert Smithson,Frank Stella, andHannah Wilke, among others. The museum's holding inPop art are particularly strong, including works byGeorge Segal,Tom Wesselmann, andAndy Warhol. 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 byDoug Aitken,Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla,Polly Apfelbaum,Sanford Biggers,Ellen Gallagher,Wade Guyton,Matthew Day Jackson,Wangechi Mutu, andJavier Téllez.^[49]

Media related toModern art in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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  Édouard Manet,Gypsy with a Cigarette, before 1883^[50]
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  Paul Gauguin,Figures in an interior, ca. 1890
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  Odilon Redon,Apparition, 1905–10
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  Robert Henri,Mildred Clarke von Kienbusch, 1914
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  George Bellows,California Headlands, 1917

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. ofAlfred Stieglitz's landmark imageThe Steerage. The decisive moment for the medium at Princeton came in 1971 whenDavid Hunter McAlpin, 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,Charles Sheeler,Ansel Adams,Wynn Bullock,Imogen Cunningham,Edward Weston, andEliot Porter, among others. McAlpin also established a fund which has enabled, over time, the purchase of some 400 photographs, including work byHill & Adamson,László Moholy-Nagy andWilliam Henry Fox Talbot.^[52][53]

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 inPictorialism, anchored by theClarence 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 ofRuth Bernhard andWilliam B. Dyer.^[52][53]

Media related toPhotographs in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

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  Gustave Le Gray,Brig on the Water, 1856^[54]
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  Carleton Watkins,View from Inspiration Point, 1879^[55]
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  Lewis W. Hine,Adolescent Girl, a Spinner, in a Carolina Cotton Mill, 1908^[56]

The collection of Prints and Drawings includes 15,000 works on paper as well as a small number ofIlluminated manuscripts, by artists from the fourteenth century to the present. Notable areas of strength includeold master and nineteenth-century Europeanprints, Italian and SpanishRenaissance andBaroquedrawings, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and British drawings,watercolors, andsketchbooks, a selection of Indian and Persianminiature painting, and a large collection of modern and contemporary Latin American works on paper.

The print collection began with the large bequest ofJunius Spencer Morgan, Class of 1888, in 1932, which included old masterengravings andetchings, primarily by the notable seventeenth-century printmakersHendrik Goltzius,Jacques Callot, andStefano della Bella. In 1938, another bequest, byDan 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 byGuercino,Salvator Rosa,Giovanni Battista andDomenico Tiepolo, andGeorge Romney. Frank Jewett Mather Jr., the museum's second director, made numerous purchases in the 1940s, including Italian Renaissance drawings, works on paper bySamuel Palmer, and watercolors byJohn Marin, andPaul Cézanne. In 1945, Professor Clifton R. Hall bequeathed his collection of old master prints and American watercolors, including three masterpieces byEdward 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 asGerman Expressionism. The modern and contemporary holdings continue to grow, with an emphasis on artists such asGlenn Ligon,Martin Puryear,Robert Rauschenberg, andKiki Smith, who are a vital part of the teaching curriculum of the university.^[58]

Media related toPrints in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons
Media related toDrawings in the Princeton University Art Museum at Wikimedia Commons

• Prints
• 
  Albrecht Dürer,The Engraved Passion, 1507–1512,engraving^[59]
• 
  Rembrandt van Rijn,Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves (The Three Crosses), 1653–1655,drypoint andburin, fourth of five states plate^[60]
• 
  Paul Gauguin,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^[61]
• 
  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,The Jockey, 1899,color lithograph

• Drawings
• 
  Luçon Master,Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1405,tempera andgold leaf onparchment^[62]
• 
  Michelangelo Buonarroti,Bust of a Youth and Caricature Head of an Old Man, Both in Left Profile, ca. 1530, black chalk on tanlaid paper
• 
  Guercino,Boy in a Large Hat, 1630s-40s, pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash on beige laid paper^[63]
• 
  Winslow Homer,Eastern Point Light, 1880,watercolor over graphite on wove paper (cream-colored wove paper)
• 
  Mary Cassatt,Young Woman in a Black and Green Bonnet, 1890, pastel on tan wove paper^[64]
• 
  Edward Hopper,Universalist Church, 1926^[65]

Henry Pearlman started his collection with the 1945 purchase, for $825, ofChaïm Soutine'sView of Céret, seen in the window of theParke-Bernet auction house while walking downPark 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.^[67] He would go on to amass more than fifty masterworks of late 19th- to mid-20th-centuryavant-garde European art, one of the most distinguished private collections ofmodern art in the United States. Among the most notable works arePaul Cézanne'sMont Sainte-Victoire,Vincent van Gogh'sTarascon Stagecoach, andAmedeo Modigliani's portrait ofJean Cocteau.^[68]

The heart of the collection is the finest and best preserved collection ofwatercolors by Cézanne in the world, sixteen works includingThree Pears, which was fought over byEdgar Degas andPierre-Auguste Renoir, with Degas as the victor, at Cézanne's first sale.^[67] 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 andToulouse-Lautrec, and one each by van Gogh, Renoir,Camille Pissarro,Alfred Sisley,Gustave Courbet,Honoré Daumier,Édouard Manet,Maurice Utrillo, andMaurice Prendergast. Sculpture is represented through works byPaul Gauguin,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 anengraving byAlbrecht Dürer,Adam and Eve. Henry Pearlman himself is represented by a bust byGiacomo Manzu and a portrait byOskar Kokoschka.^[69]

The collection has been much exhibited, including an international tour in 2014-16 which included theAshmolean Museum atOxford University, where it was the museum's most popular exhibition on record,^[70] theMusée Granet inAix-en-Provence, theHigh Museum of Art inAtlanta, and theVancouver Art Gallery inCanada, ending at the Princeton University Art Museum,^[68] where the collection has been on long-term loan since 1976.^[71]

Media related tothe Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection at Wikimedia Commons

• 
  Paul Cézanne,Three Pears, ca. 1888-90^[72]
• 
  Vincent van Gogh,The Stagecoach to Tarascon, 1888^[73]
• 
  Edgar Degas,After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself, 1890s^[74]
• 
  Amedeo Modigliani,Jean Cocteau, 1916^[75]

On March 22, 2023, the Office of the Manhattan District Attorney was authorized to seize from the museum eleven items suspected of having been stolen and smuggled before the university acquired them.^[76] In 2024, 16 additional artifacts linked to alleged art smuggler and Princeton alumnus Edoardo Almagià were identified in the museum collection.^[77]

• Antonaras, Anastassios (January 8, 2013).Fire and Sand: Ancient Glass in the Princeton University Art Museum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.ISBN 978-0300179811.
• Banner, Lisa A. (2012).Spanish Drawings in the Princeton University Art Museum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.ISBN 978-0300149319.
• Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum. December 30, 2013.ISBN 978-0300174403.
• Fong, Wen C. (1987).Images of the Mind: Selections from the Edward L. Elliott Family and John B. Elliott Collections of Calligraphy and Painting at the Art Museum, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.ISBN 978-0943012049.
• Giles, Laura M.; Van Cleave, Claire (May 20, 2014).Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.ISBN 978-0300149326.
• Hughes, Michael (December 1, 2002).The Blair Bequest: Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Princeton University Art Museum. International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society.ISBN 978-9627502623.
• Kelleher, Patrick J. (1982).Living with Modern Sculpture: The John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.
• Pop Art: Contemporary Perspectives. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum. 2007.ISBN 978-0300122121.
• Ridgway, Brunilde Sismondo (June 13, 1994).Greek Sculpture in The Art Museum, Princeton University. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.ISBN 978-0943012162.
• Steward, James Christen (2013).Princeton University Art Museum Handbook of the Collections Revised and Expanded Edition (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.ISBN 978-0943012414.
• Wilmerding, John; Foster, Kathleen (October 11, 2004).American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: Volume 1: Drawings and Watercolors. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum.ISBN 978-0300106060.

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