A Museum Reborn

When the Princeton University Art Museum reopened last fall with a twenty-four-hour art-viewing extravaganza, the crowds came. Before even entering, jaws agape, visitors craned their necks back-back-back to take in the soaring Let me kindly introduce myself. They call me MC Prince Brighton, the forty-foot high mosaic the museum commissioned from contemporary artist Nick Cave that occupies two walls of the entrance court. “I see this figure as the master of ceremonies that will welcome you,” Cave has explained.

 

Princeton’s former art museum closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and was subsequently demolished to make way for the highly anticipated new building, which doubles the footprint of the original museum and quadruples the gallery space, the better to accommodate the growth of its globe-spanning collections. Some context: The former building had the capacity to display forty works of American art. The new museum can show 300 such works, allowing it to bolster the presence of Latin American and Native North American art.

 

Although the concrete building in the heart of the Princeton University campus evokes the hulking brutalist style, its light-bathed interior is designed to encourage curious wandering. “We want you to get productively lost,” declares James Steward, the museum’s director, “and have a serendipitous sense of discovery.”

 

This is a building that practically begs you to explore.

 

Of the nine interconnected cube-like pavilions, seven are devoted to modern and contemporary art, ancient Mediterranean art, art of the ancient Americas, European art, Asian art, American art, and temporary exhibitions. (The others contain the Marquand Library and the Paul & Heather Haaga Conservation Studios.) Collectively, they will showcase about 6,000 works in the museum’s first year of operation (the museum’s total collection numbers more than 117,000 objects).

 

Most of the thirty-two galleries are housed on the second floor. Although the pieces are primarily arranged geographically, expect to discover art in unusual places, like non-European pieces alongside European art. “The surprising juxtapositions of objects across a broad chronology or a wide geography bring them into dialogue with each other,” Steward explains. Take, for example, happening upon Andy Warhol’s Blue Marilyn set among Christian icons. “Blue Marilyn was installed here to specifically draw out the degree to which Marilyn Monroe became an icon,” Steward says. “It invites visitors to ponder: ‘Why is she in this context, rather than in the context of Modern art?’ But this can change: Marilyn will move, and by finding new companions, we’ll see something new in that painting.”

 

In this way, the museum sets the stage for artworks to reveal layers of meaning. In the American Art gallery, you’ll encounter a five-gallon 1850s stoneware storage jar bearing the name of Princeton College that was created by David Drake, an enslaved potter in South Carolina who signed many of his works “Dave.” The jar is displayed adjacent to The Hartley Family, circa 1787, by Henry Benbridge, which depicts four generations of lavishly dressed women from a plantation family whose wealth grew from the system of human bondage that produced the jar.

 

“I hope that what comes forward is an appreciation of each of these objects on their own terms and an understanding that these objects spring from specific historical moments,” Steward says. “David, the enslaved potter who had the audacity to sign his own pots—a dangerous way of revealing he was literate at a time when it was illegal for a slave to be literate—is a powerful, potent object on its own terms. When we layer in these contextual considerations, the visitor has the option of stepping into a particular interrogation.”

 

Yes, fan favorites are prominently displayed. You’ll find Charles Willson Peale’s iconic painting George Washington at the Battle of Princeton (1783–84), at the entrance to the American Art pavilion, flanked by busts of General Washington. A circa 1250 Guanyin sculpture, seated in “royal-ease” pose, welcomes guests at the entrance to the Asian Art pavilion.

 

The galleries, separated by walls that stop three-quarters of the way to the ceiling, offer glimpses into neighboring spaces. These artistic wayfinders allow visitors to follow their curiosity. “The sight lines are important,” Steward says. “From a distance, you might see through the gallery portal to the portrait of George Washington, which would be a signifier that American Art might be found in that quadrant. There’s a certain serendipity in that visitors can decide for themselves that they want to make that detour.”

 

Beyond Cave’s mural, the museum commissioned five other ambitious artworks, such as The Ziggurat Splits the Sky, a fifteen-foot-tall sculpture by the Syrian-born American artist Diana Al-Hadid, which is visible from both the lawn and the easternmost galleries, and Naga, a twenty-foot-high kinetic sculpture by the Vietnamese-American artist Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, which is juxtaposed with a Roman mosaic of Medusa dating from the late second century CE that was unearthed during the Princeton-led excavations of Antioch in the 1930s.

 

The ground floor houses the Haskell Education Center and two art walks, which lead visitors toward social gathering spaces and the galleries, the museum store, and the Welcome Gallery, which houses exhibitions. Currently on display: “Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay” (through July 5), which presents a focused survey of the ceramics of the artist, a longtime Princeton professor who lived in Quakertown, in Hunterdon County. On the second floor, two other exhibition galleries showcase “Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50” (March 14–July 26), which concentrates on the essential generative years for the Abstract Expressionist artist, and “Photography as a Way of Life” (April 18–September 7), which examines the postwar arrival of photography through images by Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan.

 

The new building blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors. Steward says large public artworks on the lawn nearby allow the museum “to spill outside” as “markers of arrival.” Especially eye-catching on a bright spring day is Doug and Mike Starn’s (Any) Body Oddly Propped, six dyed glass and steel frames, along with two bronze-cast branches, which also stood sentry outside the former building. The sculpture is counterbalanced by a new acquisition: the monolith Untitled (Dango 13-11-27), completed in 2013 by the Japanese-born American ceramic artist Jun Kaneko.

 

One of the missions behind the design of the Princeton University Art Museum, Steward says, is to combat museum fatigue. The layout offers three viewing rooms that hold just a few pieces of art, allowing visitors to take a break, meditate, or get lost in thought looking out the windows onto campus. “The nine-pavilion model allowed us to create an undulating façade with courtyards between the pavilions,” Steward says, “which creates ideal opportunities for puncturing the building with daylight to refresh visitors inside and remind them where they are in the world: in the heart of Princeton University.”

 

From Thursday to Monday, you can grab breakfast or lunch on the third floor at Mosaic, a café that derives its name from the museum’s ancient Roman mosaics and the handmade painted tile mosaic adorning the restaurant’s north wall, created by artisans in Mexico. If you plan to stay in town for dinner, reserve a coveted seat for the five-course tasting menu at elements (66 Witherspoon Street), where chef Scott Anderson has curated a menu of progressive modernist cooking using locally sourced ingredients. With the kids? Tuck into burgers at Alchemist & Barrister (28 Witherspoon Street). Follow with a scoop of artisanal ice cream at The Bent Spoon, in Palmer Square, which is renowned for its seasonal flavors.

 

Book a night or two at the Graduate by Hilton Princeton (10 Chambers Street) and stay the weekend to explore the town and wander the university’s iconic campus, renowned for its Collegiate Gothic architecture. The latest in this boutique chain of college-town hotels is an immersion into local history, legends, and nostalgia. Order a crafted cocktail at the hotel restaurant Ye Tavern and ruminate over the masterworks you have just witnessed. “We want visitors to come away feeling that even the art of the past can speak to their lived experience,” Steward says, “that the people who made these objects were not so dissimilar to who we are today, with our day-to-day concerns and our concerns about the fate of the world.”

 

Patti Zielinski, River Towns’ chief arts writer, found herself getting productively lost after spying Notary, by Jean-Michel Basquiat, at the entrance to the Modern and Contemporary Art Pavilion inside the Princeton University Art Museum.