Director's Welcome

Princeton is home to one of the country’s most significant collections of twentieth- and twenty-first-century sculpture. Following in the tradition of civic statuary and public monuments, Princeton’s collection places extraordinary, durable works of art in the path of everyday life for members of the University community and visitors to this beautiful and historic campus. The core of the collection was assembled for the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, funded by an anonymous benefactor and named for the World War II fighter pilot and member of Princeton’s class of 1945. The range of work, including new additions in various media, contribute to what Lewis Thomas, Class of 1933, termed “the look and the feel of an institution deliberately designed for thinking.” As noted by William G. Bowen, President of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, “the collection is a source of vitality, a reminder of the possibilities of form, for each of us as we walk on the campus.”