Art on Campus
Two years ago during my first week as manager of campus collections, the Art Museum’s curator of Asian art, Cary Liu, asked if I could help him track down ten astronomical paintings by Howard Russell Butler Jr., Class of 1876, that he fondly remembered hanging in Fine Hall while a student at Princeton. These celestial images, painted during the first decades of the twentieth century, had once hung in the old Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History in New York but were brought to Princeton in the 1950s for display at the Fritz-Randolph Observatory and later in a corridor in Fine Hall.
Ten years ago, during a building renovation project, they were removed for safekeeping— to, as we discovered, a custodial closet where we found them stored alongside light bulbs and cleaning supplies. Four of the ten paintings have recently been conserved and were re-hung in Whitman College’s Community Hall in February, where they can again capture the imagination of students and other visitors.
Howard Butler’s astronomical paintings are but one example of the collections built over centuries and held across the Princeton campus, art works that for many reasons were never formally part of the Art Museum’s holdings and thus ran the risk of being lost, stolen, or damaged. In 2007, recognizing the need for centralized oversight for these collections and their importance to the history and identity of the University, their care was formally transferred to the Art Museum and a position created to manage the holdings.
The Campus Collections include the so-called "Princeton Portraits," a collection of over six hundred paintings and sculptures comprised mostly of likenesses of important Princetonians as well as non-portrait works that relate to the history of the University. The Princeton Portraits span centuries and encompass enormously varying styles and subjects, including Charles Willson Peale’s landmark portrait George Washington at the Battle of Princeton from 1784, commissioned by the Trustees of what was then known as the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) with funds given by Washington himself. Other highlights include a remarkable sequence of dinosaur paintings by the Victorian artist and naturalist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, commissioned in 1876 by then University President James McCosh as a progressive response to Darwin’s theories, for the Elizabeth Marsh Museum of Geology and Archaeology located in what is now the Faculty Room at Nassau Hall. Happily, these too have recently been on view, in an exhibition held at Historic Morven on the occasion of the year of Darwin— the bicentenary of his birth in 1809.
Ten years ago, during a building renovation project, they were removed for safekeeping— to, as we discovered, a custodial closet where we found them stored alongside light bulbs and cleaning supplies. Four of the ten paintings have recently been conserved and were re-hung in Whitman College’s Community Hall in February, where they can again capture the imagination of students and other visitors.
Howard Butler’s astronomical paintings are but one example of the collections built over centuries and held across the Princeton campus, art works that for many reasons were never formally part of the Art Museum’s holdings and thus ran the risk of being lost, stolen, or damaged. In 2007, recognizing the need for centralized oversight for these collections and their importance to the history and identity of the University, their care was formally transferred to the Art Museum and a position created to manage the holdings.
The Campus Collections include the so-called "Princeton Portraits," a collection of over six hundred paintings and sculptures comprised mostly of likenesses of important Princetonians as well as non-portrait works that relate to the history of the University. The Princeton Portraits span centuries and encompass enormously varying styles and subjects, including Charles Willson Peale’s landmark portrait George Washington at the Battle of Princeton from 1784, commissioned by the Trustees of what was then known as the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) with funds given by Washington himself. Other highlights include a remarkable sequence of dinosaur paintings by the Victorian artist and naturalist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, commissioned in 1876 by then University President James McCosh as a progressive response to Darwin’s theories, for the Elizabeth Marsh Museum of Geology and Archaeology located in what is now the Faculty Room at Nassau Hall. Happily, these too have recently been on view, in an exhibition held at Historic Morven on the occasion of the year of Darwin— the bicentenary of his birth in 1809.
Perhaps the most celebrated works in the Campus Collections belong to the John B. Putnam Jr. Memorial Collection of outdoor sculpture distributed across the University campus. Comprised of twenty-two sculptures by master artists of the twentieth (and now twenty-first) century, the Putnam Collection is the result of a generous gift of funds in the 1960s by an anonymous donor as a memorial to a Princeton alumnus killed in World War II. Commonly regarded as one of the greatest single collections of public art, the Putnam Collection can be thought of as a plein air lesson in art history by many of the great masters of the modern canon. Highlights include Sir Henry Moore’s cast bronze organic abstraction Oval with Points (1969–70), thought to have been inspired by the undulating surface of an elephant skull given to the artist by the distinguished scientist Sir Julian Huxley; and Alexander Calder’s steel stabile Five Disks: One Empty (1969–70). Intentionally painted in Princeton’s collegiate colors of orange and black when installed, the orange disks were blackened after Calder saw his piece on site, evidently with some displeasure: orange did not routinely figure as part of the artist’s palette. Another signature work from the Putnam Collection was long associated with the Art Museum— Pablo Picasso’s Head of a Woman (designed 1962, executed 1971), which long adorned the entry court of McCormick Hall until it was removed because of construction in 2001. (It is, happily, still around, sited between Spelman Hall and New South.) Fortunately, the Putnam Collection is not a static phenomenon, and work is underway to identify and either purchase or commission works by artists who can be considered the modern masters of our own time, so that the collection continues to reflect the evolution of artistic practices.
In addition to the Princeton Portraits and the Putnam Collection, the Campus Collections include dozens of sculptures, monuments, and memorials important to the University’s rich history across 264 years and its singular traditions. With centralized care comes advocacy–for continuing to build on this collection with new works suitable to the new buildings being planned and constructed, for drawing attention to and utilizing these precious holdings, and for preserving this unique and evolving assemblage that puts art in the path of everyday life across the whole of the University.
Lisa Arcomano Manager of Campus Collections
In addition to the Princeton Portraits and the Putnam Collection, the Campus Collections include dozens of sculptures, monuments, and memorials important to the University’s rich history across 264 years and its singular traditions. With centralized care comes advocacy–for continuing to build on this collection with new works suitable to the new buildings being planned and constructed, for drawing attention to and utilizing these precious holdings, and for preserving this unique and evolving assemblage that puts art in the path of everyday life across the whole of the University.
Lisa Arcomano Manager of Campus Collections
