In May of this year, while I was attending my 60th Reunion of my Graduate School, l had the wonderful opportunity to visit Princeton’s new museum of art on a guided tour with the Director of the Museum, James Steward.
The museum was designed by Adjaye Associates and contains 146,000 square feet of exhibition soace, has 117,000 objects of art, and covering 5,000 years of human creativity in 32 galleries. Time Magazine has cited the new museum as one of the “Greatest Places of 2026.” The museum was conceptualized and built over a four year period at a cost of $300 million and formally opened on October 31, 2025.
Princeton University’s art collection began in 1775 and the original art museum was established in 1882. The museum has a vast collection of Greek and Roman antiquities including ceramics, marbles, bronzes and mosaics. There is also an excellent collection of European paintings from the early Renaissance through the nineteen century. The collection also includes a superb collection of Contemporary Art. In addition the museum is known for its large photographic holdings that total over 27,000 works. In addition the museum has large collections of art from Asia, United States, Latin America and Africa.
A Campus Collection includes a large number of paintings, sculptures, memorials and monuments significant to the University’s history. In this collection are Princeton portraits numbering some 600 paintings and sculptures. One of these portraits is of George Washington at the Battle of Princeton by Charles Wilson Peale that is shown in this article.
Another collection available to the museum is the Putnam Collection,which comprises 22 works by master artist of the 20th and 21th Centuries. Among the highlights of the collection are Oval with Points by Henry Moore and Five Disks: One Empty by Alexander Calder. Another important painting in the collection is Pablo Picasso’s Head of a Woman.
Another significant collection is on loan to the museum is the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation of Post Impressionist that includes masterpieces by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Amedeo Modiglinani, Henre de Toulouse – Lautrec, and Chaim Soutine.
The museum also has an excellent collection of Modern and Contemporary art.The collection includes landscapes by Claude Monet as well as Edward Manet. The famous painting of Claude Monet of the Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge is shown in this article. Other artists in this group include Odilar Redon,Vasily Kandinsky, Gabrielle Munter, Emily Nolde, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Yves Tanguy Jean Ptrp, and Ilya Repin.
Admission to the museum is free and it is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 10:00am to 5:00pm and Thursday 10:00am to 9:00pm and Sunday 12:00pm to 5:00pm. More info on the museum is available here: https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/ .
