Princeton Collects

When construction began in 2021 to build the new Princeton University Art Museum, a building effort of another sort quickly followed. The Museum’s leadership and curators joined with visionary Museum supporters, embarking on an ambitious effort to secure transformative and strategic gifts of art with which to fill the expansive spaces planned for the new Museum for Princeton. Dubbed a “campaign for art,” this initiative to acquire gifts and promised gifts of art continued throughout the entirety of the construction process. The Museum’s community answered this call in spectacular fashion. At its conclusion, the effort resulted in more than 2,000 works of art given by over 200 donors on the occasion of the Museum’s opening on October 31, 2025. Approximately 150 of these works are presented in the new building’s special exhibitions galleries in an exhibition titled Princeton Collects, on view through March 26, 2026.

The acquisition of artworks of the highest caliber supports the evolution of the Museum’s gallery display, research, and teaching capacities while filling key gaps and amplifying the collections’ existing strengths.