Art Museum Publications

A Window into Collecting American Folk Art: The Edward Duff Balken Collection at Princeton

The Princeton University Art  Museum’s collection of American drawings and watercolors is impressive  in both scope and quality, providing a comprehensive overview of the  nation’s artistic traditions. This lavishly illustrated book highlights 77 master drawings and watercolors chosen from the museum’s  extensive collection. The selections, which range from the 18th century to the present, include Benjamin  West, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Andrew Wyeth, Georgia  O’Keeffe, Lee Bontecou, and Tom Wesselmann. 

The book also features an introduction by John Wilmerding  describing Princeton’s history of collecting American art, as well as an  essay by Kathleen A. Foster on the historiography of American drawings  and watercolors. A useful checklist of the Museum’s entire collection of more than 1,300 American drawings and watercolors, selectively illustrated  in color, concludes the book.

• Hardcover

Cezanne: The Rock and Quarry Paintings, edited by John Elderfield, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the  Princeton University Art Museum in Spring 2020.

From the mid-1860s until shortly before his death, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) created 27 canvases that take rock formations as their principal subjects. This is the first publication to focus exclusively on these extraordinary works. It illustrates all of Cézanne’s mature paintings of rock formations, including scenes of the terrain of the forest of Fontainebleau, the Mediterranean coastal village of L’Estaque, and the area around Aix-en-Provence, alongside examples of his watercolors of these subjects. 

An introductory essay by John Elderfield assesses these paintings in terms of their character, development, and relationship to Cézanne’s other works; their critical interpretations; and their geological and corporeal associations. Faya Causey’s essay examines the Provençal context of Cézanne’s rock and quarry paintings, as well as the status of geology in France during the second half of the 19th century. The catalogue section, introduced by Anna Swinbourne, chronicles the sites, presenting details of where specifically the paintings were made and of the features that they represent, together with technical aspects of particular works.

• Hardcover book
• 179 pages
• Color illustrations

Christina Fernandez sees herself as equally artist and storyteller, one who employs photography to explore social and physical isolation and estrangement within marginalized communities while experimenting with composition and form. Her art is shaped by the concerns that powered the Chicano movement and the aesthetics and discourses of postmodernism. As she considers the questions and ideas that absorb her, Fernandez moves between landscape and portraiture, but she revises the visual language to suit her purpose, producing works that are deeply thoughtful and engaging.

This exhibition catalog examines the Los Angeles–based photographer’s work since the late 1980s. Among these works are María’s Great Expedition, in which the artist photographs herself as her immigrant grandmother, and the Lavanderia series, photographs created from layered images that offer glimpses into Eastside LA laundromats and the lives of their customers. The volume’s six essays are supplemented with excerpts from three interviews with the artist. Together, they offer critical perspectives on Fernandez’s radical intellectual and formal agenda and reveal the multiple senses of “exposure” that are at play in her art.

• Weight: 4.15 pounds
• Dimensions: 11" x 1.5" x 11.6"
• Hardcover
• 180 Pages

City of Gold: The Archaeology of Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus complements the  exhibition City of Gold: Tomb and Temple in Ancient Cyprus, which was on view at the Princeton University Art Museum October 2012 - February 2013. 

The modern Cypriot town of Polis Chrysochous—"City of Gold"—lies above the city of Arsinoe and the earlier city-kingdom of Marion. In 1885 excavators began exploring the extensive cemeteries of these cities. Since 1983 the Princeton Cyprus Expedition has focused on the remains of sanctuaries, public buildings, workshops, and private residences spanning the Geometric through Classical periods of Marion and the Hellenistic through Roman, early Christian, and medieval periods of Arsinoe.

Combining archaeological investigation and historical analysis, City of Gold relates the discoveries establishing that these cities had close ties with Greece and with regions from Egypt to Anatolia, findings best represented by the painted vases and terracotta sculptures of Marion and the architecture of Arsinoe. Nearly half of the 110 artifacts included in the catalogue are previously unpublished, and another third are published in detail for the first time.

• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 11.16 x 9.23 x 1.32 inches
• Softcover

Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925, by Anne McCauley, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum October 2017 - January 2018.

This exhibition spotlights the work of Clarence H. White (1871-1925), a founding member of the Photo-Secession, a gifted photographer celebrated for his beautiful scenes of quiet domesticity and outdoor idylls, and an influential teacher and photographic mentor. The first retrospective devoted to the photographer in over a generation, this exhibition and accompanying publication will survey White’s career from his beginnings in 1895 in Ohio to his death in Mexico in 1925 and, importantly, will locate his work within the contexts of the international Arts and Crafts movement, the development of photographic magazine illustration and advertising, and the redefinition of childhood and the domestic sphere. 

• Hardcover

Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik' Kingdom

Dancing into Dreams explores 8th-century Maya vase painting of the Ik' kingdom, located in the tropical lowlands of present day Guatemala. Ik' vases are acclaimed for their naturalistic color, veristic portraiture, and calligraphic line. Their painted surfaces depict historical subject matter and often include the names of the artists and patrons, as well as hieroglyphic explanations of the portrayed events and vessel production. Collectively, such self-consciously historical works offer a precision and nuance, unparalleled in the ancient Americas, to the study of the role of art in elite society.

Authoritative and accessible, this handsomely illustrated volume presents a history of Ik' vase painting and describes the dramatic scenes represented on the vases with compelling and historically accurate vignettes.

Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, 1540–1680: A Selection from North American Collections

This volume is the catalogue of an exhibition organized by the Princeton University Art Museum, consisting of eighty-eight drawings by artists active in Central Europe during the neglected period following the age of the Old German Masters (Dürer, Holbein, and their contemporaries) and preceding that covered by Central European Drawings 1690–1800.

An introductory essay considers the problem of historiography, and comments on the drawings in relation to the cultural history of the Holy Roman Empire, present-day Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia, roughly between the two sieges of Vienna. Problems of style and stylistic definition are treated in relation to idea gained from poetry and rhetoric. The introduction and the fully illustrated catalogue entries, which are organized in chronological order and according to region, also deal with issues of the functions, collecting, technique, and theory of drawings. Discussions of individual drawings raise many of the most important issues of late-16th- and 17th-century art in Central Europe.

• Soft Cover

For the first time, this important volume features nearly all of the ancient glass objects in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum. Collected over the course of more than a century, the objects originate from locations across the eastern Mediterranean region. Taken together, the 509 ancient glass vessels and plaques provide a timeline of archaeological and cultural history from the middle of the second millennium B.C. to the rise of Islam in the 7th century.

An introductory essay by award-winning scholar Anastassios Antonaras summarizes the history of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine glass, with a special emphasis on people—workers, artisans, owners, and vendors—and on the processes they used to create and decorate these artifacts. Conveniently arranged according to production technique, each entry in Fire and Sand features a color photograph, ink drawing, and detailed description.

• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 11.7 x 10.3 x 1.7 inches
• Hardcover

by John Ralph Willis

In the bicentennial year of 1976, the Princeton University Art Museum held its first exhibition on African American art, Fragments of American Life, which featured works by six contemporary painters: Romare Bearden, Joseph Delaney, Rex Goreleigh, Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, and Hale Woodruff. These artists were championed by Harlem Renaissance philosopher and critic Alain Locke in his seminal book The Negro in Art (1940). 

Consisting entirely of private loans, this exhibition was curated by Princeton faculty member John Ralph Willis, the renowned scholar of African and Islamic history, former president of the recently founded Program in African American Studies, and honorary secretary of the University’s chapter of the Alain Locke Society. Distinctively modernist, the paintings reflected Locke’s injunction to black artists to demonstrate and celebrate the African roots of black life in America.

• Softcover

Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking, by curators Mitra Abbaspour and Calvin Brown, et. al., is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2018.

Focusing on the vital role of literature in the development of  the artistic practice of Frank Stella (b. 1936), this insightful book  looks at four transformative series of prints made between 1984 and  1999. Each of these series is named after a literary work—the Had Gadya (a playful song traditionally sung at the end of the Passover Seder), Italian Folktales, compiled by Italo Calvino, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, and The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by  Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi. This investigation offers a  critical new perspective on Stella: an examination of his  interdisciplinary process, literary approach, and interest in the  lessons of art history as crucial factors for his artistic development  as a printmaker. 

The authors examine how Stella’s dynamic engagement with literature paralleled the artist’s  experimentation with unconventional printmaking techniques and  engendered new ways of representing spatial depth to unleash the  narrative potential of abstract forms. 

• Hardcover

In 1891, Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) traveled to Tahiti in an effort to live simply and to draw inspiration from what he saw as the island’s exotic native culture. Although the artist was disappointed by the rapidly westernizing community he encountered, his works from this period nonetheless celebrate the myth of an untainted Tahitian idyll, a myth he continued to perpetuate upon his return to Paris. He created a travel journal entitled Noa Noa (fragrant scent), a largely fictionalized account that recalled his immersion into the spiritual world of the South Seas. To illustrate his text, Gauguin turned for the first time to the woodcut medium, creating a series of ten dark and brooding prints that he intended to publish alongside his journal—a publication that was never realized. The woodcuts crystallized important themes from his work and are the focus of this major new study.

Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories of Bering Strait  by William W. Fitzhugh, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum from October 3, 2009 to January 10, 2010. 

Gifts from the Ancestors: Ancient Ivories from the Bering Strait is a major exhibition that brings to light the artistry and life practices of the hunters who worked across two millennia in what are now the American and Russian sides of Bering Strait. The exhibition offers the opportunity to discover a little-known aspect of the art of the ancient Americas and represents a groundbreaking partnership between one of the world’s great research universities and the Native peoples of the Bering Strait region.

Gifts from the Ancestors features nearly 200 of the finest works of walrus ivory carving drawn from the Museum’s own holdings along with loans from more than twenty public and private collections around the globe, including rare examples from recent Russian excavations at Ekven, Chukotka, which will be exhibited for the first time in North America. In addition, works by award-winning contemporary artist and St. Lawrence Islander Susie Silook and master carvers Sergei Tegryl’kut and Mikhail Leyviteu from Chukotka, Russia, will be presented to bridge past and present and reveal how today’s ivory artists continue to be inspired by ancient forms and motifs and the millennia-old relationships among people, animals, and the environment.

• Softcover

From its foundation in 1888, the Princeton University Art Museum has amassed an impressive collection of ancient Greek sculpture, which, along with the museum's other collections of ancient art, has long played an integral role in the training of art historians and archaeologists. This book is a comprehensive catalogue of The Art Museum's ancient Greek sculpture. A team of scholars headed by Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway thoroughly documents each of the 40 pieces that constitute this broad and diverse collection. 

The catalogue covers both original works of Greek stone sculpture as well as Roman sculptures that copy or owe their inspiration to earlier Greek works. Photographs of each piece are accompanied by information on dating, provenance, material, dimensions, and condition and by a detailed description and an analysis placing the piece in its artistic and historical contexts.

• Hardcover

Princeton University Art Museum Handbook of the Collections

Revised and Expanded Edition.

The encyclopedic collections of the Princeton University Art Museum comprise more than 92,000 objects ranging from ancient to contemporary art. This essential guide features more than 450 of the Museum's best-loved and most important works--including Chinese bronzes and calligraphy, Roman sculptures and mosaics, Maya ceramics, African beadwork and sculpture, old master prints and drawings, European and American paintings, drawings, and sculpture, and outstanding examples of photography--all beautifully illustrated and accompanied by informative texts. An introduction by Director James Steward offers a brief history of the Museum from its origins in the 1750s to today. Available exclusively at the Museum Store.

by Laura M. Giles (Author), Lia Markey (Author), Claire Van Cleave (Author)

This richly illustrated volume offers a new look at the exceptional collection of Italian drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum. An introductory essay by Laura M. Giles chronicles the history and significance of the collection, and nearly one hundred of the collection’s masterworks are treated with essay-length entries and full-page images. The first scholarly examination of the collection since Felton Gibbons’s comprehensive publication of 1977, the catalogue includes an appendix of more than 150 drawings that have entered the collection since―many previously unpublished, and all fully documented with short entries. Highlights include works by celebrated masters, including Carpaccio and Modigliani, from the early Renaissance through the early Modern periods, with an emphasis on the collection’s renowned holdings of works by Luca Cambiaso, Guercino, and the two Tiepolos.

With contributions by Alessandra Bigi Iotti, Jonathan Bober, Giada Damen, Diane de Grazia, Rhoda Eitel-Porter, Frederick Ilchman, Anne Varick Lauder, John Marciari, Elizabeth Pilliod, John Pinto, David Stone, Catherine Whistler, and Giulio Zavatta.

• Hardcover, 324 pages
• Publication date: May 20, 2014

Life Magazine and the Power of Photography, edited by Katherine A. Bussard and Kristen Gresh, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum in Spring 2020.

This groundbreaking book considers how the magazine’s use of images fundamentally shaped the way its readers understood photography and experienced important historical events. Drawing on unprecedented access to Life Magazine's picture and paper archives, as well as some photographers' personal archives, this beautifully arranged volume presents new scholarship that sheds light on the collaborative process behind many now-iconic images and photo-essays. 

• Hardcover
• 245 illustrations 

 Winner of the 2020 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association 

The essays in More than One examine sequentiality and serialism in the practice of photography from the medium’s earliest years to the present. Contributors explore nuances of syntax and sense raised by works like photographic albums, books, thematic portfolios, journalistic photo features, and documentations of performance art.

Fully illustrated essays discuss, among other topics, the little-known volume Beyond This Point (1929), a collaborative experiment by American photographer Francis Bruguiere and London radio producer Lance Sieveking; the evolving relationship between public space and sexual self-definition in the early work of Minor White; and an important performance work by artist Ana Mendieta. The title essay surveys the social conditions and expressive motives that have given rise to serial and sequential forms throughout the history of photography.

About the Contributors: 

Joel Smith is curator of photography and Kelly Baum is the Locks Curatorial Fellow for Contemporary Art, both at the Princeton University Art Museum. Peter Barberie is curator of photography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Anne McCauley is the David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art at Princeton University. Kevin Moore is an independent scholar and curator.

Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment,  by co-curators Karl Kusserow and Alan C. Braddock, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum October 2018 - January 2019.    

The book is a groundbreaking ecocritical exploration of American art that  examines the complex and evolving relationship between art and the  environment. The authors present more than 120 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, videos, and works of decorative art, from the colonial period to the present, exploring for the first time how American artists of different traditions and backgrounds have both reflected and shaped environmental understanding while contributing to the development of a modern ecological consciousness. 

• Hardcover
• 400 pages

  Winner of the 2019 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association  

Nobody's Property; Art, Land, Space, 2000-2010, by Kelly Baum, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum from October 2010-February 2011.

This generously illustrated volume surveys a new chapter in the history of environmental art, one in which space, geopolitics, human relations, urbanism, and utopian dreamwork play as important a role as, if not more than, raw earth. Discussed are case studies by seven artists and two artist teams—Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Yael Bartana, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Emre Hüner, Andrea Geyer, Matthew Day Jackson, Lucy Raven, and Santiago Sierra. While some of these artists explore historical and symbolic configurations of space, others parse the social, legal, and economic conditions of specific land-sites, including the Navajo Nation, the island of Vieques, the border town of Juarez, and the cities of Tongling, Jerusalem, and Beirut. Not confined to the displacement of matter, these artists employ a wide range of media, such as performance, animation, assemblage, and photography.

• Hardcover