5 objects from: The Princeton University Art Museum

Museum of Modern Art was recently reopened in New York. MoMA’s curators proudly asserted that the museum is now more global than it was before. One thing that I particularly like about university museums is that they are always more sweeping in their geographical scope than the rest. They were global even before it was cool to be global. That applies for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the collections of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the Museum für Naturkunde and for many others. Surely, some parts of the world are more represented than the others, and some periods are overemphasised. There is an underlying truth that a section on Ancient Greece is a must. The same applies for Renaissance, and add to that a Dutch master, and at least one precious impressionist. Despite that, there is something unique about university museums.

Princeton University Art Museum is quite something. It was founded in 1882, and during the last 140 years some remarkable artefacts arrived in downtown Princeton. Collections grew in different ways. Princeton is really rich, so University keeps buying art. Many alumni had left various collections to the museum as a bequest (that is how, and why, Princeton has largest collection of snuff boxes). Furthermore, archeological expedition financed by the University had sometime came home with their findings - mosaics, stained glass, sculptures…  

I really wanted to share five objects from the Princeton University Art Museum.  

Amedeo Modigliani: Jean Cocteau

Marsden Hartley: blue landscape

Lewis Hine: Adolescent Girl, Spinner in a Carolina Cotton Mill

Alice Neel: William Seitz

Japanese Tomb Guardian