These new works join a lengthy list of Princeton University commissions and acquisitions that have defined the campus since the late 1960s, when an anonymous benefactor donated funds to purchase public art in memory of Lieutentant John P. Putnam Jr., a World War II fighter pilot and member of the Class of 1945. An initial advisory committee of four Princeton University alumni with expertise in the fine arts assembled the now-celebrated Putnam Collection over six years, choosing twenty-two works by luminaries such as Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, and Louise Nevelson.
“Artist Jane Irish views a red-figure kylix from the 4th century BCE with Carolyn Laferrière, associate curator of ancient Mediterranean art. Photo: Joseph Hu We build on a tradition of public art at Princeton extending to the 1960s with the commissioning of works by major modern artists of the time,” Steward said. “These four site-specific commissions and two acquisitions bring a vibrant cohort of international voices to bear in that existing collection with works that will be both beautiful and arresting.”
Visitors approaching the Museum’s primary entrance will be greeted by a monumental commission by Nick Cave, the internationally renowned Chicago-based artist acclaimed for work that bridges the visual and performing arts. Titled Let me kindly introduce myself. They call me MC Prince Brighton., Cave’s colorful composition will occupy two walls of the light-filled entrance court, extending more than forty feet high. Composed of mosaic tile, wood, and acrylic elements suggestive of metalwork, the installation depicts a character named Prince Brighton, who is clad in a suit of flowers and a halo of spinning tops and globes, serving, in a way, as an alter ego for the artist and his famed Soundsuits. Adinkra symbols from West Africa—representing concepts such as courage, truth, unity, and peace—surround the main figure, who leans forward in a gesture of welcome to all who step into the entrance court.
The Museum’s east terrace will feature a fifteen-foot-tall sculpture by Diana Al-Hadid, which will be visible from the Prospect House lawn and, for those inside the building, from the easternmost galleries. As part of her creative process, the New York–based artist researched Princeton’s collections of ancient art, including works from near her birthplace in Aleppo, Syria. The New York Times called the resulting design “a ghostly ziggurat in aluminum.” The complex assembly will also include figural and mosaic elements. Al-Hadid has said of the work, “I am interested in the suggestion that this ancient structure might lay stored—in some ways buried—within a very contemporary new building.”
The brutal conflict that produced the sculpture’s materials—as well as the hideous figure of Medusa, a gorgon who turned those who looked upon her to stone—sharply contrasts with the serenity of its site. Featuring a double-height ceiling and two large “lens” windows, the gallery will offer glimpses onto the campus beyond, as well as views into the space with the mobile swaying in the gallery’s air currents.
The trompe l’oeil painting, which Irish created in her studios in Philadelphia and rural Pennsylvania, will be set within a recessed coffered ceiling. Against a backdrop of 150 illusory bas-reliefs featuring Irish’s translations of works in the Museum’s holdings, the painted ceiling ruptures, breaking open to reveal incandescent skies spotlighting scenes of pacifism, prayer, and the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, offering hope for a gentler future.
Of Cosmos Beyond Atrocity, Irish has written, “My purpose is to engage the viewer to let go of the history of atrocity, even as we acknowledge its reality. . . . I am seeking to replace the cherubs and gods of the European ceiling painting with ordinary people overcoming a legacy of violence and suffering and coming to heroic acts of resistance.”
Two new acquisitions, chosen for specific locations adjacent to the new Museum, will act as visual markers of the institution’s purpose and identity, signaling the diversity of artworks, artists, and materials to be found inside.
A bronze figurative sculpture, Heights I (2022) by Rose B. Simpson—whose work was the focus of a 2022 exhibition at Art@Bainbridge—will be installed on the south sculpture terrace, where it will be visible from an interior, wood-clad viewing room as well as from the pedestrian pathways to the south of the Museum. Heights I marks the first foray into bronze for an artist best known for her figural ceramic sculptures. The human figure, standing more than seven feet high, balances a many-handled vessel on its head.
Finally, a piece by Jun Kaneko, a pillar of the postwar American ceramic renaissance known for his enormous hand-built works, will occupy an area to the northeast of the building viewable from McCosh Walk. The nine-foot-tall untitled sculpture from 2013 will nestle into the landscape, serving as a marker to pedestrians approaching from the east. The scale of Kaneko’s creations, as well as his precise and complex glazing techniques, set him apart from other ceramicists. To fire clay compositions that tower over most humans, the artist developed and built a specialized kiln in Omaha, Nebraska, a center for ceramic technology in the United States.
Kaneko’s work will serve as a counterbalance to the glass, bronze, and steel sculpture by the Starn brothers, (Any) Body Oddly Propped, which functioned as a beacon to the old Museum. Disassembled, conserved, and stored for the duration of the construction of the new Museum, this beloved sculpture will be reinstalled to the west of the facility, once again shaping a complex spatial relationship with the Museum building and joining the six new monumental artworks in continuing the rich history of public art and site-specific commissions at Princeton.
Christine Minerva Writing and Communications Assistant
