New Study Rooms Deepen Students’ Connection to the Collections
A teaching museum at its heart, the Princeton University Art Museum encourages academic engagement with artworks through the use of the Haskell Education Center’s object study classrooms. The Museum officially began welcoming Princeton classes to its six new study rooms during the Spring 2026 semester. Students from across disciplines have been able to access artworks not currently on view in the galleries in five ground-floor classrooms and a second-floor room located off the Conservation Studios. With object-based learning in mind, these rooms are thoughtfully designed to optimally display a wide array of mediums. The walls feature slats, which fit custom-built shelves, hooks, and even vertical rods for hanging scrolls with ease. Easels, book mounts, and object trays remain on hand, easily set on tables before students or placed along a counter that spans an entire wall’s length in each room. All these components ensure a highly versatile space, which is essential for staging objects both safely and in a timely manner, particularly on days with a high level of activity.
Photo: Kirstin Ohrt
The team that manages the object study classrooms comprises Collections Access Supervisor Molly Gibbons; Collections Associate Joelle Collins; and me, Collections Associate Alexandra Lebovitz. We facilitate access to the collections by scheduling study room visits, arranging the availability of objects for classroom use, staging artwork, monitoring classes, and keeping the Museum’s collections management system updated. Though these core responsibilities stay consistent, each day is different by virtue of the specialized needs each visit may entail.
The average class visit to a study room can range from fifty minutes to just under three hours, but the logistics behind making objects accessible take much longer to organize. Each work of art requested by a professor must first undergo careful evaluation to determine its suitability for use in a teaching setting. This process includes a thorough assessment of the object’s condition, as well as detailed planning to move it safely. For certain pieces, such as very large paintings or complex sculptures, the challenges can be considerable.
Photo: Kirstin Ohrt
From navigating tight corridors to ensuring proper handling, equipment, and support, a host of practical hurdles must be addressed to transport the work securely from storage to one of the study rooms. For example, Charlie Barber, the Donald Drew Egbert Professor of Art and Archaeology, took advantage of the versatile layout of a study room to have his students in ART 228 (“Art and Power in the Middle Ages”) examine small objects, such as ivories, alongside much larger works, including a Roman marble sarcophagus fragment measuring nearly four feet in length and weighing hundreds of pounds. To make this available for class use, preparators from the Exhibition Services team used a sculpture lift to safely transfer the sarcophagus from its crate to a table, which was then wheeled into the classroom for an in-the-round viewing experience.
The study rooms provide, foremost, opportunities for detailed, close looking. Students are not just invited but actively encouraged to get close to artworks, with tools such as magnifying glasses at their disposal. The presence of Museum staff at every visit also allows for levels of visual engagement that cannot necessarily be replicated in a gallery setting. For instance, we regularly handle objects during visits, allowing for various angles or components of a work to be studied.
Just as the study rooms offer access to objects long held by the Museum that are not currently installed in the galleries, they also provide the opportunity to study recent acquisitions, often before such works are ever exhibited. Carolyn Yerkes, associate professor of art and archaeology, brought her students to one of the study rooms to view multiple works by the artist Albrecht Dürer, including Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), which entered the collections only in 2024. Viewing this work alongside the other two prints that make up Dürer’s three “master engravings” led to fruitful visual and textual engagement. Professor Yerkes said about the class’s visit: “In ART 547, a graduate seminar titled ‘The Renaissance Military Architect,’ we were able to study this new acquisition together with the two other prints—Dürer’s Saint Jerome in His Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514)—with which it is closely associated. We tested Panofsky’s famous thesis about Knight, Death, and the Devil against other readings of the print . . .[and] against our own judgment.”
The ability to meaningfully connect students to the Museum’s collections is what makes running the object study classrooms truly rewarding. On the value of seeing the collections up close, Allison Marino, a graduate student in ART 547, stated, “Whether I have visited for art history classes centered on the exact works before our eyes; or on conservation tactics, strategies, and ethics; or for graduate student–led object-centered workshops, the new study rooms facilitate close looking at a variety of objects simultaneously. This is what I have found most valuable about them: The opportunity to see works of different media and techniques alongside one another leads to deeper material understandings and encourages surprising connections between objects.” The Museum’s collections offer abundant avenues for object-based teaching, learning, and research, and now the new object study classrooms provide a worthy venue for this central tenet of the Museum’s mission.
