Story Archive

Story Archive

  • Sacred Caves of the Silk Road

    Sacred Caves of the Silk Road

    Located at the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, along a cliff face on the outskirts of the city of Dunhuang in China’s far western Gansu Province, the sacred caves of Dunhuang present a vivid picture of the convergence of...
  • Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills

    Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills

    Taking inspiration from Blake’s poem for its title, the exhibition Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills: The British Passion for Landscape examines the tensions between nature and culture, country and city, that would play a decisive role in British art...
  • Ursula von Rydingsvard and Others: Materials and Manipulations

    Ursula von Rydingsvard and Others: Materials and Manipulations

    For decades, the sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard has explored organic and inorganic materials, the familiar and the unfamiliar. The works by von Rydingsvard on view illustrate a concern for the aesthetic potential and emotional power of materials that is shared...
  • Fitz Henry Lane’s Ship in Fog, Gloucester Harbor

    Fitz Henry Lane’s Ship in Fog, Gloucester Harbor

    A recent acquisition, Ship in Fog, Gloucester Harbor by Fitz Henry Lane, is an archetype of Luminism, a style characterized by a preoccupation with light and atmosphere that flourished among a group of American painters between 1850 and 1875.
  • In the Margins of Princeton’s Great Persian Book of Kings

    In the Margins of Princeton’s Great Persian Book of Kings

    In addition to its lavish illustration and decoration program, one of the most immediately striking features of the Peck Shahnama is the large number of marginal inscriptions that it includes. While the addition of marginalia is a feature of many...
  • Transforming Nature: The Watercolors in Cézanne and the Modern

    Transforming Nature: The Watercolors in Cézanne and the Modern

    According to the French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, during Paul Cézanne’s later years it was not uncommon to discover watercolors he had discarded in the fields near Aix-en-Provence—scattered testimonials to the fine disregard the artist apparently displayed toward these sheets...
  • Sacred Caves of the Silk Road: Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang

    Sacred Caves of the Silk Road: Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang

    At the western edge of China lies the Taklamakan Desert. Bordered by mountain ranges to its north and south, the desert stands as a forbidding gateway between the civilizations of East and Central Asia. To traverse this formidable expanse, two...
  • Princeton's Great Persian Book of Kings

    Princeton's Great Persian Book of Kings

    Composed more than one thousand years ago by the Persian poet Firdausi, the Shahnama , or Book of Kings, narrates the story of Iran from the dawn of time to the seventh century A.D. This sweeping epic spans the reigns...
  • Cézanne and the Modern

    Cézanne and the Modern

    This fall, visitors to the Princeton University Art Museum have the opportunity to view remarkable works from the Pearlman Collection by Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaïm Soutine, and—especially—Paul Cézanne. The works return to Princeton,...