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Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, 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 in Antioch. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance 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 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 has been constructed on the same site over the course of four years starting in 2021 with David Adjaye serving as architect. 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 the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. Several "monuments men" are alumni of Princeton University.
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, 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. It was joined by a portrait of King George II, who had issued the letters patent establishing the college. The two portraits hung in the central prayer hall, and were displayed alongside various antiquities 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.
The creation of the Art Museum in a more formal sense took place under the leadership of James 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 charged William Cowper Prime, a Princeton alumnus and founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and George B. McClellan, the Civil War general and then governor 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.
The museum, and what is now the Department of Art and Archaeology, were formally created in 1882, with Allan 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 of Henry 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 professor Arnold Henry Guyot, part of which is still on display in Guyot Hall. A new purpose-built fireproof Romanesque Revival Museum was designed by A. Page Brown and completed in 1890 on the site of the current museum.
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Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, 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 in Antioch. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass. The collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance 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 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 has been constructed on the same site over the course of four years starting in 2021 with David Adjaye serving as architect. 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 the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art. Several "monuments men" are alumni of Princeton University.
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, 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. It was joined by a portrait of King George II, who had issued the letters patent establishing the college. The two portraits hung in the central prayer hall, and were displayed alongside various antiquities 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.
The creation of the Art Museum in a more formal sense took place under the leadership of James 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 charged William Cowper Prime, a Princeton alumnus and founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and George B. McClellan, the Civil War general and then governor 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.
The museum, and what is now the Department of Art and Archaeology, were formally created in 1882, with Allan 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 of Henry 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 professor Arnold Henry Guyot, part of which is still on display in Guyot Hall. A new purpose-built fireproof Romanesque Revival Museum was designed by A. Page Brown and completed in 1890 on the site of the current museum.