Prints and Drawings

The Prints and Drawings collection includes more than 15,000 works on paper as well as several hundred illuminated manuscripts and printed books by European and American artists from the 14th century to the present, in addition to a select representation of Persian and Indian miniature painting. The quality and breadth of the collection were established in the 1930s and 1940s by gifts and bequests from Princeton alumni Junius S. Morgan and Dan Fellows Platt, Museum director Frank Jewett Mather Jr., and professor Clifton R. Hall.

Among the strengths of the Princeton collection are old master prints, including large holdings of etchings and engravings by Jacques Callot and Hendrick Goltzius in addition to fine impressions of works by such master printmakers as Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, and Goya; Italian 17th- and 18th-century drawings, with outstanding groups by Guercino, Salvator Rosa, Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo; Spanish Renaissance and Baroque drawings; 18th- and 19th-century French and British prints and drawings; American drawings, sketchbooks, and watercolors, including examples by Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keeffe; and a significant group of Latin American modern and contemporary prints and drawings.

Because works on paper are sensitive to light, selections from the collection are displayed in the galleries on a rotating basis. Prints, drawings, and manuscripts not on view are available by appointment in the department's study room.

Laura Giles

Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings

After holding curatorial positions at the Spencer Art Museum of Art at the University of Kansas and the Art Institute of Chicago, Laura M. Giles joined the Art Museum in 2000, and in 2010 was appointed its inaugural Heather and Paul G. Haaga Jr., Class of 1970, Curator of Prints and Drawings. She attended Swarthmore College and Williams College, and received her Ph.D. in art history from Harvard University. Her scholarly fields of interest are Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, and Western drawings and prints from the 16th-century to the present, on which she has published numerous articles. She has curated a wide range of exhibitions of works on paper at the Museum, including Cézanne in Focus: Watercolors from the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection (2002) and 500 Years of Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum (2014), both of which were accompanied by publications. In addition to organizing rotations of prints and drawings in the galleries and the Works on Paper Study Room, most recently she co-curated the special exhibition States of Health: Visualizing Illness and Healing (2019-20). Future projects include research on the Museum’s large collection of British drawings and watercolors. She attended Swarthmore College and Williams College, and received her Ph.D. at Harvard University.

Jun Nakamura

Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings

Jun P. Nakamura joined the Museum in 2023 as assistant curator of Prints and Drawings. Prior to his appointment he was Suzanne Andrée Curatorial Fellow in Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he curated Macho Men: Hypermasculinity in Dutch and American Prints (2022–2023), and cocurated Pictures in Pictures (2022), Expressions (2021), and Of God & Country: American Art from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection (forthcoming, 2023). Previously, he held positions at Leiden University and the National Gallery of Art. He earned a PhD in art history from the University of Michigan, with a dissertation on the use and meaning of professional engraving style in the seventeenth-century Netherlands and beyond, and received an MA in art history from Southern Methodist University and a BFA in fashion design and art history from Washington University in St. Louis.

Collection Stories

Story Archive

Newly Acquired Prints Showcase Rembrandt’s Innovative Printmaking Practice

The Museum recently acquired two etchings by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669): The Windmill of 1641 and The Flight into Egypt: Altered from Segers of around 1652.

Tigers’ Eyes on Alabama Paper: Tailing Thornton Dial’s Drawings in the Princeton University Art Museum

No artist draws a timeless portrait of the history of African American struggle in Alabama and the Deep South better than Thornton Dial Sr. (1928–2016) of Bessemer, Alabama.

A Major Gift of American Prints

The Museum’s collection of American prints and drawings has been substantially augmented by a recent gift from Richard Reinis, Class of 1966, and Lois Reinis.