Story Archive

Appropriation and Reinvention: Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan

Appropriation and Reinvention: Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan

Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan centers on a large ceramic vessel, known as Chigusa, that achieved great fame in sixteenth-century Japan as a tea-leaf storage jar. It was used in chanoyu , the practice of tea. In...
James Peale and The Battle of Princeton

James Peale and The Battle of Princeton

This unsigned work, The Battle of Princeton , was a gift of the legendary Princeton trustee Dean Mathey, Class of 1914, and is thought to be a collaborative effort. Read more
Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads

Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads

The Princeton University Art Museum installed 12 monumental sculptures— Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads— by the renowned contemporary Chinese artist, architectural designer, curator, and social activist Ai Weiwei.
Stories in Miniature: South Asian Painting at Princeton

Stories in Miniature: South Asian Painting at Princeton

Brightly colored and full of detail, Indian miniatures have become highly sought after works of art across the globe. Recently a collecting focus for the Museum, this field offers images rich in narrative, color, and brilliant execution. Discover fine examples...
Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan

Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan

Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan brings to Princeton an object that reached a high peak of fame in sixteenth-century Japan: a tea-leaf storage jar named Chigusa. Remarkably, Chigusa’s history can be tracked from even before that time...
Authority Embodied: Nkisi

Authority Embodied: Nkisi

Kongo across the Waters notably presents a rich selection of Kongo minkisi (singular nkisi ). A nkisi is a container that holds an ancestral spirit as well as empowering materials or medicines.
Kongo across the Waters

Kongo across the Waters

Kongo across the Waters explores the vibrant culture of Kongo peoples from West Central Africa and the transmission and enduring influence of that culture in the Americas.
New York Times praises Lee Bontecou exhibition at Princeton

New York Times praises Lee Bontecou exhibition at Princeton

“'Lee Bontecou: Drawn Worlds,' at the Princeton University Art Museum, is as stimulating an exhibition of works on paper as you might expect from an artist known for “drawing” with a blowtorch," says Karen Rosenberg in her review of Lee...
Beyond the Classroom: Shanghai

Beyond the Classroom: Shanghai

“Anxious Megalopolis: Shanghai’s Urban Cultures (1842 – to the present)” will be offered in the fall semester of 2014. Team-taught by Esther da Costa Meyer, professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology, and Cary Y. Liu, curator of Asian...
Intaglio Techniques at Crown Point Press

Intaglio Techniques at Crown Point Press

Innovation in printmaking, from woodblock and lithography to silkscreen and solvent transfers, proliferated in the postwar United States—and nowhere did more remarkable advancements in intaglio technique take place than at Crown Point Press in the 1970s.