About the Project

Campus Art at Princeton enhances the educational and visceral experience of art and sculpture on campus for students, the local community, and visitors alike. Visitors can hear the voices of Museum curators and experts involved behind the scenes, including fabricators, installers, conservators, and photographers. For some of the works, architects and historians contextualize the art in relation to surrounding architecture and University history. Users can browse a light box of images or take walking tours using an interactive map divided into five campus neighborhoods. As new works are installed and new perspectives added, the site will continue to evolve.

History of the Collection

During the University’s first two hundred years, public sculptures—primarily commemorative monuments and civic or decorative statues—were used to embellish campus buildings and exterior courtyards. It was not until 1968, with the gift of the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection, that sculpture as a fine art was embraced and integrated into the campus plan. Gifted by an anonymous donor as a memorial to Lt. John P. Putnam Jr., a Princeton alumnus killed in World War II, the collection was assembled over six years by an advisory committee of four Princeton University alumni who were preeminent in the field of fine arts.

The artists chosen for the initial collection of twenty-two sculptures stand as a virtual “who’s who” of modern masters, from Pablo Picasso to Louise Nevelson. As stipulated by the Putnam gift, the sculptures were not placed inside the Museum but installed outdoors, so that students and the community can experience the works in the course of their daily lives. In the years following the Putnam bequest, additional gifts of sculpture to Princeton’s campus, including George Segal’s Abraham and Isaac and Scott Burton’s Public Table, have been a vital part of campus planning

As the campus expands, with new buildings and new disciplines, site-specific installations by acclaimed contemporary artists are being commissioned, including Kendall Buster’s clusters of cell-like orbs suspended from the ceiling in Frick Chemistry and Odili Odita’s energizing graphic mural, which ascends two staircases in the common area of Butler College.

The University’s Campus Art Steering Committee, cochaired by the director of the Art Museum and the University Architect, will ensure that the Campus Collections continue to enrich the University community.

Special Acknowledgements

This project has been made possible, in part, by generous support from the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art and the Virginia and Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Program Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art. 

Publications:

Patrick J. Kelleher, Living with Modern Sculpture: The John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 1982) and Office of Communications booklet

Sculpture of Princeton University including Works from The John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection (Princeton, NJ: Office of Communications in Association with Princeton University Art Museum, 2011) with contributions from director of the Art Museum, James Steward, Noam Elcott, Kevin Hatch, and Hal Foster