Museums - Princeton University Art Museum

In 1882, William C. Prime, class of 1843, and General George McClellan were directed to create an art department for Princeton. Prime was strong in his conviction that original works of art were essential to art history instruction and that a museum should be formed in conjunction with the new Department of Art and Archaeology. He backed up his view with his own collection of pottery and porcelain, which formed the core of the new museum. In addition to Prime’s material, the Museum of Historic Art, as it was known until 1947, housed casts of famous antiquities, architectural details, and ornaments. Paintings and other artworks slowly made their way into the collection over the years. In 1922, the Sienese Gothic–style McCormick Hall designed by Ralph Adams Cram was built to house the collection. In 1989, the interior of the museum was renovated and a 27,000-square-foot addition, the Mitchell Wolfson, Jr., Class of 1963, Wing, designed by Mitchell/Giurgola, was dedicated. Today the museum is one of the most outstanding university museums in the country and is among the richest cultural resources in the state of New Jersey, as well as being an active participant in the international community of museums.
Numbering nearly 60,000 objects, the collection today ranges chronologically from ancient to contemporary art, and concentrates geographically on the Mediterranean regions, Western Europe, the United States, and Latin America. There is an outstanding collection of Greek and Roman antiquities as well as a noteworthy collection of Chinese art. Its pre-Columbian collection contains remarkable examples of Maya art. African art is also represented, as is that of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
The works exhibited in the newly renovated gallery of African art have been reinstalled to reveal the continent’s immense diversity of artistic production. On view are works from West, Central, and South Africa including objects of prestige and daily use, royal regalia, symbols of secret societies, and sculptures that mark such rites of passage as birth, initiation, and death. The original bequest for the collection, made in 1953 by Mrs. Donald B. Doyle, was comprised of works collected prior to 1923 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. In recent years, significant gifts have been made, notably by Perry Smith, H. Kelly Rollings, and John B. Elliott.
The pre-Columbian collection ranges from Olmec to Chavin—two of the oldest cultures of Mesoamerica and South America, respectively—as well as fine Aleut and Eskimo ivories from North America. The chronological and spatial ranges include hallmark examples from major ancient American cultures, and masterpieces of Mesoamerican art, particularly from the Olmec and Maya. The core of the collection was formed in the 1960s by Gillett G. Griffin, whose keen eye was attracted to elegant Olmec ceramics and jades and Maya Jaina figures in the earliest days of collecting such objects.