The Department of Contemporary Art is responsible for art in most media, including painting, sculpture, and video, created in all countries between 1970 and the present day. The primary focus is on works that not only contribute in significant ways to the field and exemplify the most pressing cultural, social, and philosophical issues of their day, but those whose historical energies and creative impetus derive in large part from the radical shift in artistic production that occurred in the early 1960s. The Museum has a longstanding commitment to collecting—and exhibiting—the art of the last thirty-odd years. Indeed, it possesses a small yet superb collection of contemporary art comprised of works by such artists as Polly Apfelbaum, Sanford Biggers, Christian Boltanski, Dan Flavin, Ellen Gallagher, Andrea Geyer, Sol LeWitt, Allan McCollum, Wangechi Mutu, Tobias Putrih, Martha Rosler, Yinka Shonibare, Haim Steinbach, and Javier Téllez. Supplementing these works are outstanding examples of contemporary art housed in the Department of Photography as well as the Department of Prints and Drawings. Rineke Dijkstra, Candida Höfer, Jasper Johns, William Kentridge, Sherrie Levine, Glenn Ligon, Ana Mendieta, Vik Muniz, Thomas Nozkowski, Adrian Piper, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Shahzia Sikander, Thomas Struth, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others, are all represented in the Museum by works on paper. The founding of the Department of Contemporary Art as an independent collecting category, in late 2007, both affirms and expands the Museum’s dedication to bringing the most ambitious, engaging, and provocative art of the last several decades to Princeton.

View the installation of George Segal's Circus Acrobats.

Search this Collection