History
In 1882 President James McCosh charged William C. Prime, Class of 1843, and General George McClellan to report to the trustees on the formation of an art department. Prime was strong in his conviction that original works of art were essential to instruction in the history of art and that a museum should be formed in conjunction with the Department of Art and Archaeology. He gave impetus to its establishment with the promise of his collection of pottery and porcelain on the completion of a fireproof building. In 1890 the Trumbull-Prime collection, which also bore Prime's wife's name, was delivered to the Romanesque revival building designed by A. Page Brown. Allan Marquand, Class of 1874, professor of art history and, after 1905, chairman of the Department of Art and Archaeology, was appointed the first director, a position he held until his retirement in 1922.
In addition to Prime's collection of pottery and porcelain, the Museum of Historic Art, as it was known until 1947, housed casts of famous antiquities, architectural details and ornaments. Paintings slowly made their way into the collections, especially after Frank Jewett Mather Jr. joined the faculty in 1910 to teach Renaissance art. He became director of the museum in 1922, the same year McCormick Hall, an addition in Sienese Gothic style after the plans of Ralph Adams Cram, was added to the south side of the A. Page Brown building. The A. Page Brown building itself was razed in 1963, when Steinman and Cain renovated and enlarged McCormick Hall in a campaign that was completed in 1966. In a subsequent campaign, the interior of the museum was renovated and a 27,000-square-foot addition, the Mitchell Wolfson Jr., Class of 1963, Wing, designed by Mitchell/Giurgola, was dedicated in 1989. One-third of the addition was new exhibition space; other improvements included a spacious conservation studio and new seminar and study storage rooms for all areas of the collection, facilitating the use of the collections for teaching.
Today the museum is one of the most outstanding university museums in the country. The collections, in the areas established under the directorships of Marquand and Mather and those initiated after Mather's retirement in 1946, have greatly exceeded those of a study collection. The founding principal of the museum was to give students direct, intimate, and sustained access to original works of art to complement and enrich the instruction and research at the university, and this continues to be its primary function. The museum also serves a much larger audience, however, as one of the richest cultural resources in the state of New Jersey and as an active participant in the international community of museums.
Numbering more than 68,000 objects, the collections range chronologically from ancient to contemporary art, and concentrate geographically on the Mediterranean regions, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America. There is an outstanding 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 important examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art. Significant loans amplify the collection in many areas.
Among the greatest strengths in the museum are the collections of Chinese art, with important holdings in bronzes, tomb figurines, painting, and calligraphy; and Pre-Columbian art, with remarkable examples of the art of the Maya. The museum has distinguished collections of old master prints and drawings and a comprehensive collection of original photographs. African art is represented as well as Northwest Coast Indian art. Not housed in the museum but part of the university's collection is the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection of twentieth-century sculpture, including works by such modern masters as Alexander Calder, Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, and Pablo Picasso. The museum also administers the university's Princeton Portraits Collection.
Special exhibitions are organized throughout the year, many drawn from the permanent collection and coordinated with the curriculum of the Department of Art and Archaeology and programs in other departments of the university.
Numbering more than 68,000 objects, the collections range chronologically from ancient to contemporary art, and concentrate geographically on the Mediterranean regions, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America. There is an outstanding 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 important examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art. Significant loans amplify the collection in many areas.
Among the greatest strengths in the museum are the collections of Chinese art, with important holdings in bronzes, tomb figurines, painting, and calligraphy; and Pre-Columbian art, with remarkable examples of the art of the Maya. The museum has distinguished collections of old master prints and drawings and a comprehensive collection of original photographs. African art is represented as well as Northwest Coast Indian art. Not housed in the museum but part of the university's collection is the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection of twentieth-century sculpture, including works by such modern masters as Alexander Calder, Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, and Pablo Picasso. The museum also administers the university's Princeton Portraits Collection.
Special exhibitions are organized throughout the year, many drawn from the permanent collection and coordinated with the curriculum of the Department of Art and Archaeology and programs in other departments of the university.
