Day Two at the New Museum
For years the Museum’s staff and its leadership volunteers were focused on what we called Day One—everything that had to happen so we could open the new Museum. From completion of construction, installation of the galleries, and fabrication of the labels to the training of our docents (and ourselves!) and the hiring of new team members, there were seemingly a million details and moving parts. And yet ironically, the sheer urgency of the whole helped keep us united in a common cause.
And now it’s Day Two. It’s time to operate the Museum we spent so many years shaping from vision to reality, and this includes relearning old skills that were largely put to the side since at least before COVID. For example, the organizing of complex loan exhibitions—including securing and shipping loaned works of art, as well as fundraising to pay for projects—has largely been on the back burner since early 2020. But with the dawn of 2026, we shall see the first major, Princeton-organized loan exhibitions in our new galleries. This spring, the long-awaited Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50 will contextualize Princeton’s own Black Friday (1948), one of the paintings from what is arguably the defining period in this remarkable artist’s mature career. Photography as a Way of Life: Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan is a project that began with Princeton-funded research in the archives we hold of the essential midcentury photographer Minor White and then expanded to include two of his peers, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Our plans to tour this exhibition to three other museums affords it, too, a complexity that has required us to re-hone our tools.
Mounting exhibitions is by no means all I have in mind when I write of Day Two. Object-based teaching begins in earnest this semester at Princeton, when more than a dozen courses in the Department of Art & Archaeology will rely heavily on our collections, including the famous Art 100, the long-standing gateway course with which we introduce undergraduates to the history of art. After a soft launch in the fall, our object study classrooms will be abuzz with students and faculty interrogating works of art in the original. The four large dense-display cases that face these classrooms are full of objects selected for their importance to teaching—even as they provide the wider public glimpses into the work happening mostly in the classroom.
Public-facing programming goes full tilt, too, with visiting artists—such as Nick Cave, who will give this year’s Friends Annual Keating Lecture, shedding light on the monumental mosaics that he made for our Entrance Court—and scholarly symposia on midcentury photography and the history of Chinese art. At last, many of these programs will once again take place under our own roof, enabling participants to pop next door to see works discussed in the programs on view in our galleries. Other programs—like our first-ever co-commission with the McCarter Theatre Center, a new piece by Dorrance Dance to be presented at McCarter in April—take place outside our walls but afford new opportunities for resonance with what’s happening in the galleries.
All of this is, of course, what museums like ours do. But for me, it has a special delight because we were away from our collections and our audiences for so long. Clearly, I am not alone in experiencing that delight. The opening festivities and first weeks of regular operations saw a remarkable outpouring of engagement. Not only did more than 3,600 students—nearly half our student population—turn out for our student preview in October, but nearly 22,000 visitors flocked to our round-the-clock open house. And they kept coming: Many days saw visitor numbers between 3,000 and 5,000, and by the end of our first six weeks of operations, we had welcomed 102,783 visitors—essentially half of what used to be our average annual attendance.
Numbers tell only part of the story. The quality of response has been equally gratifying, with students and other visitors lingering in the galleries, reading labels, and debating with each other what they are seeing. I overheard one student exclaiming to her friends “Now, I’m really glad I chose Princeton!” Critical enthusiasm has been similar: Architectural Record declared our building “one of the most striking museums to rise in decades,” before describing it as “undeniably an exceptional work of architecture and a worthy addition to the pantheon of great American museums.” The Guardian named it “a place of rare substance and craft that revels in its theatrical spatial effects and sensuous material details, standing at the historic centre of Princeton’s campus with a timeless air.” Even the actor-musician-comedian Steve Martin came to call and described the Museum on social media as “stunning.”
If I sound like a proud parent, I am. I hope many of you join me in basking in this moment and, more importantly, in now living Day Two with us. After all, the building is not the end in itself but the vessel for making possible a range of extraordinary experiences.
