A Rebirth for the Museum
When the arrival of COVID-19 in March 2020 mandated that we quickly close our galleries, little did we know that it would be five and a half long years before the Museum would be reunited with its collections, its galleries, and its visitors. Now, at long last, the wait is over.
The closer we get to our public reopening on October 31, the more I reflect on how rare it is for an established cultural and educational institution like ours to all but reinvent itself. Of course, what is at our core—our collections—remains, but how they are presented, how the diversity of the works on public view interact with one another, and how the new galleries interface with the hundreds of public programs we will present each year is entirely changed and strengthened.
It is difficult to convey the totality of what I am describing, or the work it has required of our extraordinary staff. Each of the approximately seven thousand works of art to be displayed on what we term “Day One” has been the focus of new research and writing. Hundreds of these works have undergone deep conservation treatments, allowing the collections to look better than ever. Some two thousand new works from more than two hundred donors have entered the collections through the so-called campaign for art, bringing new gifts and promised gifts to Princeton on the occasion of the opening of the new building. We’ve also deployed a wholly new website featuring a redesigned graphic identity that informs all other communications—little has escaped our focus.
I myself am now, once again, in an office that is joyfully adjacent to the galleries and the collections. This means that a quick stop to look in on the progress of installing the galleries for the art of the ancient Mediterranean world or to consider a lighting adjustment in the pavilions led by European or Asian art is once again at my doorstep. I cannot overstate the delight I take in this, and the joy I anticipate in seeing the galleries teeming again with visitors in only a few weeks’ time.
This has inevitably, then, been a time of unprecedented newness for our institution. Every day, new works of art make their way onto our walls and into our custom casework at a measured but insistent pace, and with them, new discoveries to be made. Seeing Frank Stella’s monumental River of Ponds II (1969) find its home in our architecturally extraordinary Orientation Gallery, or Pat Steir’s Moon Beam (2005) act as a stunning harbinger of our new galleries for Asian art, or new additions to the collections such as Byron Kim’s Synecdoche (1991–) now in dialogue with a two-thousand-year-old ancient Roman mosaic are all sweet reminders of why I entered into the museum business in the first place.
I probably know the design of the building and its inaugural curation about as well as anyone, but even for me there are (happy) surprises: the glorious colors of Nick Cave’s mosaics in the Entrance Court refracting light into the adjacent galleries, seemingly dancing with the colors of the Stella; the way in which one of our monumental lens moments perfectly frames a view of Prospect House or of the hundred-year-old dawn redwood around which we designed the whole of the complex; two handmade benches by Mira Nakashima finding affinity with the ceramic art of Toshiko Takaezu in the first installation of our Welcome Gallery; the cast of afternoon light from west-facing clerestory windows onto our fifteenth-century staircase assembly from Mallorca; the brilliant acoustic design of spaces such as the Grand Hall or the smaller seventy-seat auditorium allowing for lectures without amplification. Yes, of course these are all the result of intentional, carefully made decisions, but I couldn’t have predicted how perfect some of these moments would be.
With dozens of art handlers installing the galleries every day and contractors attending to the myriad punch list items that a project of this scale and complexity inevitably throws up, the sounds of voices fill our spaces. But the whole won’t be complete, or purposeful, until we are able to welcome back all our visitors, as we will do with a twenty-four-hour open house beginning on October 31. We hope not only to give as many people as possible their first access to the new Museum by staying open nonstop in a way we never have before but also to welcome individuals who might not normally be able to come—shift workers getting off duty at 11 p.m. or students pulling an all-nighter who might welcome the chance to decompress with yoga at dawn. Just as alumni and other friends have generously shared very special memories of the old building with me over the years—a first date in our former atrium gallery, or a first childhood memory of art from Saturday morning Art for Families programs—I hope that the chance to spend a night at the Museum (albeit without sleeping bags!) might shape for many of you the first memories of your new Museum that will linger for years to come.
