Contributors and Credits

This online exhibition came about through a series of unexpected discoveries and shared interests. After arriving on campus in 2008 to become Princeton University’s first manager of campus collections, I was approached by the Museum’s curator of Asian art, Cary Liu, who implored me to find several remarkable paintings by the artist Howard Russell Butler that he feared were lost. The astronomically themed paintings had left a strong impression on him when he was an undergraduate student walking the corridor between Fine and Jadwin Halls, where the paintings had hung for many years after being removed from the Howard Russell Butler Memorial Room in the University Observatory. With a little detective work, Cary and I were able to track them down to an electrical closet in the basement of Fine Hall, behind cardboard and boxes of lightbulbs. The paintings had been removed and placed there during a building renovation, thoughtfully saved by Aric Davala, who is now the Museum’s facilities manager. The moment we laid eyes on them, we knew they were special, and I could understand why they left an impression on Cary. They elicited childhood memories of school trips to planetariums as well as that special feeling of wonderment when you look up to the sky. It became my first priority to conserve the paintings and find homes for them on campus, which I eventually did at Whitman College and later at Firestone Library.

The story didn’t end there. It turns out that Butler’s celestial paintings were also of interest to scientists. Several years after rediscovering the paintings in the janitorial closet, I was approached by Rolf Sinclair, a physicist who had recently retired from the US National Science Foundation. Rolf was giving a talk about Butler’s astronomical paintings to INSAP (The Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena) and came to Princeton for research. Listening to Rolf talk about the paintings from a scientific perspective revealed a fascinating and layered story about the artist and his work. Rolf’s enthusiasm about Butler was contagious. We continued our conversation over several years, during which time Rolf was wonderfully generous with his ongoing research about Butler. It was not long after Rolf’s visit that astronomer Jay Pasachoff, the Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and chair of the International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Solar Eclipses, asked to visit Butler’s paintings in preparation for a paper he was also presenting to INSAP, as did Richard Woo, a senior research scientist emeritus at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, who was writing an article about visual perception and the solar corona that incorporated Butler’s paintings. So many scientists wanted to see Butler’s paintings, and yet he was unknown to his own alma mater—his paintings having been relegated to a closet. It became apparent to Rolf and me that Butler, a graduate of Princeton’s first school of science, needed to be celebrated and recognized for his contributions. With support from T. Barton Thurber, associate director for collections and exhibitions, we began our work toward an online exhibition, and we are very grateful that James Steward, the Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director, saw the value not only in an online exhibition but also in mounting a small exhibition of Butler’s paintings in our galleries next summer (July 22–October 15, 2017).

Many experts in the arts and sciences lent their voices to this exhibition, but this endeavor would not have been possible without the extraordinary work done by Rolf Sinclair; Campus Collections Assistant Laura Valenza; Mellon Curator of Academic Engagement Juliana Dweck; Associate Editor and Interpretive Manager Janet Rauscher; the remarkable team in our Information and Technology department, Janet Strohl-Morgan and Cathryn Goodwin; and the website’s designers and developers, Gregory Edgerton, chief creative officer, Humble Humans, and Sean T. Walsh, cofounder, Crowd Communications Group.

Project Management 

Lisa Arcomano, manager of campus collections, Princeton University Art Museum

Rolf Sinclair, adjunct researcher at the Centro de Estudios Científicos, Valdivia, Chile, and a visiting senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has held positions at the Westinghouse Laboratories, the University of Hamburg, the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), Princeton University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and (most recently) the US National Science Foundation, from which he retired in 1998.

Curatorial Direction and Text

Lisa Arcomano, manager of campus collections, Princeton University Art Museum

Juliana Ochs Dweck, Mellon Curator of Academic Engagement, Princeton University Art Museum

Laura Valenza, campus collections assistant, Princeton University Art Museum

Scientific Direction and Text

Rolf Sinclair, has held positions at the Westinghouse Laboratories, the University of Hamburg, the École Normale Supérieure (Paris), Princeton University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and (most recently) the US National Science Foundation, from which he retired in 1998. He is currently an Adjunct Researcher at the Centro de Estudios Científicos, Valdivia, Chile, and a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Media Management

Laura Valenza, campus collections assistant, Princeton University Art Museum

Website Design and Development

Janet Strohl-Morgan, associate director for information and technology, Princeton University Art Museum

Cathryn Goodwin, manager of collections information, Princeton University Art Museum

Gregory Edgerton, chief creative officer, Humble Humans

Sean T. Walsh, cofounder, Crowd Communications Group

Website Editor

Janet Rauscher, associate editor and interpretive manager, Princeton University Art Museum

Website Advisors

Curtis Scott, associate director for communications and publications, Princeton University Art Museum

T. Bart Thurber, associate director for collections and exhibitions

Erin Firestone, manager of marketing and public relations

Contributors

Trudy E. Bell, science writer and historian of astronomy

Katherine Bussard, Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography, Princeton University Art Museum

Heather N. Cammarata-Seale, curatorial associate, modern and contemporary art, Princeton University Art Museum

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History

Rachael DeLue, associate professor of American art, Art & Archaeology, Princeton University

Heather Ewing, executive director, Center for Italian Modern Art; author, Life of a Mansion: The Story of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 

Deirdre Goodrich, former campus collections associate, Princeton University Art Museum

Taylor Kang, Princeton University class of 2019; summer intern, Princeton University Art Museum

Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, Princeton University Art Museum

Gregg Lange, Princeton University class of 1970, history columnist, Princeton Alumni Weekly

Cary Liu, Nancy and Peter Lee Curator of Asian Art , Princeton University Art Museum

Julie Mellby, graphic arts librarian, Princeton University

Ron Miller, author and illustrator; former art director, Albert Einstein Planetarium, National Air and Space Museum 

Ingrid Ockert, graduate student, History Department, Princeton University 

Roberta J. M. Olson, curator of drawings, New-York Historical Society

Jay Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy, Williams College; chair, International Astronomical Union's Working Group on Solar Eclipses

Carly Pope, Princeton University class of 2017, Art and Archaeology major

Ed Turner, professor of astrophysical sciences & director, Council for International Teaching and Research, Princeton University 

Allison Unruh, associate curator, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis

Robert Vanderbei, professor, Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Princeton University; associate faculty member in Astrophysical Sciences, Computer Science, Math, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Center for Statistics and Machine Learning, and Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University; fellow at Program for American Studies, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Princeton University

Syrinx von Hees, professor of Arabic literature and rhetoric, Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Münster

Jeff Watt, director and curator, Himalayan Art Resources

Richard Woo, senior research scientist emeritus at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

Footage of Rolf Sinclair produced and edited by

Michael Sacca, producer/cameraman

  • Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY)
  • American Museum of Natural History
    • Hayden Planetarium
    • Research Library, with special thanks to Mai Qaraman Reitmeyer, Research Services Librarian
  • American Philosophical Society
  • Benediktiner-Kloster-und Pfarrkirche Sankt Georg und Sankt Martin, Weltenburg, Germany
  • Benediktiner-Klosterkirche Mariä Himmelfahrt, Kladruby, Czech Republic
  • Buffalo Museum of Science. New York
  • Carnegie Hall, New York
    • Archives, with special thanks to Gino Francesconi, Archivist and Historian
    • Museum
  • Clay Center Observatory, Dexter-Southfield School
  • Cleveland Public Library 
  • Franklin Institute, Philadelphia
  • Goodsell Observatory of Carleton College
  • Guild Hall (East Hampton, NY)
  • Harvard College
    • Harvard College Library
      • Houghton Library
  • The Heckscher Museum of Art
  • High Altitude Observatory (HAO) 
  • Historical Society of Princeton 
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum
  • The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
  • The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  • The Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • The Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Museum of Science, Boston
  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
    • Goddard Space Flight Center
    • The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
  • The National Arts Club
  • National Gallery of Art
  • Old York Historial Society, Museums of Old York, York, Maine
  • Princeton University
    • Department of Art & Archaeology  
    • Department of Geosciences 
    • History of Science Program
    • Princeton University Library
      • Department of Rare Books & Special Collections 
      • Lewis Science Library
      • Mudd Manuscript Library
    • Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE)
  • Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
  • The Royal Society of London
  • The Rubin Museum of Art
  • Scrovegni Chapel (Padua, Italy)
  • Smithsonian Institution
    • American Art Museum
    • American Art and Portrait Gallery Library
    • Archives of American Art
    • Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 
    • National Air and Space Museum
  • Staten Island Museum, New York
  • Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
  • Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic) 
  • Tucson Art Museum (and Historic Block)
  • University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
  • U.S. National Park Service (Zion National Park)
  • U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO)
    • James M. Gillis Library, with special thanks to Gregory Shelton, Staff Librarian
  • VAGA
  • Vatican Palace (Vatican City)
  • The Walters Museum of Art
  • Williams College