It’s 2 p.m. on the first Friday of November. There are no free seats in the restaurant, and the galleries are packed. It’s exactly what James Steward, Director of the Princeton University Art Museum, envisioned when he and his team embarked on the project to create a new museum in 2018.
Seven years after selecting architect David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates to design the new building, the Princeton University Art Museum reopened to the public on Halloween, completely free of charge.
The response has been overwhelming.
“I think one of the reasons we’re seeing people lingering, and the galleries are so crowded, is because the museum is allowing people to feel good,” Steward tells NJ Advance Media, noting that guest can see 5,000 years worth of art in one visit, with less hassle — or fewer steps, at least — than at a massive institution like The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “That is a gift both from the architecture and, I think, from our curation.”
“George Washington at the Battle of Princeton, on display at Princeton University Art Museum.Richard Barnes
First established in 1882, the Princeton University Art Museum is situated in the heart of the campus and comprises nine interconnected pavilions. All four sides have doorways, creating a building “with all fronts and no backs,” as Steward notes, a structural manifestation of the museum’s inclusivity. The massing of the pavilions keeps the museum in scale with its surrounding Gothic Revival buildings, and by breaking up the larger structure, it helps to “camouflage a rather large building,” he says.
The new, 146,000-square-foot facility, which reportedly cost $300 million to build, doubles the previous museum’s footprint, with seven pavilions housing galleries and the others housing the conservation studios and the Marquand Library for fine arts.
Mosaic, a vibrant seasonal restaurant — no stale museum food here — sits on the third floor, atop 12,000 square feet dedicated to educational spaces, a 265-seat Great Hall, several outdoor terraces, and an outdoor amphitheater.
The structure is reminiscent of brutalist architecture, thanks to a ribbed, precast concrete facade and geometric, blocky forms, all of which are punctuated by bronze panels.
Princeton University Art Museum, exterior.Richard Barnes
But as muscular as the exterior feels, the inside is decidedly lighter, Steward explains. The sandblasted concrete walls and terrazzo floors add a warm texture as patrons peruse works of Claude Monet, Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe and even rock star (and noted artist) Nick Cave, whose massive mixed-media mosaic greets visitors from an exterior wall.
The museum’s design came with a bit of controversy as the architect Adjaye was accused of sexual harassment and misconduct by three former employees in 2023 (he denies the allegations and has not been charged). By this time, the museum’s design was set, and executive architects Cooper Robertson led it to completion. Adjaye was not present at the museum’s opening on Oct. 31.
Controversy aside, the breadth of work at the Princeton University Art Museum is impressive enough to grab the attention of any seasoned art professional. Among the 117,000 works in the collection — with 2,000 added during the new construction — are Monet’s painting “Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge”; Warhol’s 1962 screen-printed painting “Blue Marilyn;” Charles Willson Peale’s iconic “George Washington at the Battle of Princeton,” as well as the marble sculpture “Torso of an emperor in armor,” ca. 50-100 CE; and a section of the famous Chimú Prisoner Textile from the years 1200-1290 in Peru.
The museum is currently running two exhibitions: “Princeton Collects” (on view through March 2026) and “Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay” (on view through July 2026). The former is a collection of works that have been donated to the museum since it launched a campaign in 2021, while the latter showcases the ceramics and sculptures of Toshiko Takaezu, who was a longtime Princeton professor and a pioneering artist of the 1960s and ’70s.
Next year, the museum will present an exhibit on Willem de Kooning, as well as one featuring the mid-century modern photography of Minor White, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callahan. The reopening positions the museum as a destination for New Jersey art lovers, who are likely already familiar with the Newark Museum of Art, Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, and WheatonArts.
A gallery inside Princeton University Art Museum.Richard Barnes
But Steward pointed out one particular piece of art that he feels is symbolic of the entire museum experience — an 800-year-old Chinese sculpture of a bodhisattva, a nearly life-size wooden object that retains much of its original patina.
“I think the fact that that object has survived unbroken for 800 years, and is so almost ethereally beautiful, is such an emblem of hope,” Steward shared. “Maybe there’s hope in that for the human race.
“I’m often drawn to things that I think have a kind of nobility that lures me to want to understand them, and I hope that is something that both the building and art curation will do for visitors.”
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