While American art has been collected by the Museum since its inception, the art of this nation was first acquired in earnest during the pioneering directorship of Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (1922–1946), at a time when few institutions accorded it significance. As a result, Princeton’s American collections are among the finest of any academic museum. Long focused on painting and sculpture, the collection’s particular strengths lie in portraiture, augmented by the University’s own distinguished collection of individuals affiliated with the institution, and landscape painting, the product of noteworthy gifts of Hudson River School and later canvases by several, mostly alumni, collectors.

Much of the esteemed Boudinot Collection of largely eighteenth-century fine and decorative art associated with that historic family is displayed nearby at Morven Museum and Garden, the Princeton seat of the related Stockton family. Folk art offers another area of distinction, due substantially to the donation of alumnus Edward Duff Balken’s important collection of such material.

In recognition of the scope and stature of the Museum’s American collections, the Department of American Art, formerly a part of the Department of Later Western Art, has recently been established. New acquisitions, enhanced by the institution of a dedicated fund for the purchase of American works, have focused on building relatively underrepresented areas of the collection, notably still life and genre painting.

The American Portrait interactive explores John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Elkanah Watson.

Search this Collection