Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage

March 26-June 26, 2011

German artist Kurt Schwitters was one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, whose distinctive style merged art and life by incorporating found objects and everyday materials. Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage--the first U.S. retrospective of this leading Dada artist in a generation--explores the significance of color, light, and collage to his lifetime of artistic achievement. In addition to roughly eighty assemblages, reliefs, sculptures, and collages from 1918 to 1947, the exhibition features a full-scale reconstruction of the Merzbau, the fantastical house-like fabrication to which Schwitters returned again and again over his career. Kurt Schwitters is not to be missed!

Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage is organized by the Menil Collection, Houston.

Spring Opening Celebration

Please join us on Saturday, March 26, as we celebrate spring and our exciting new season of exhibitions, featuring the opening of Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage. The celebration begins with a fascinating lecture at 5 p.m. in McCosh 10 by the exhibition's guest curator, Isabel Schulz, entitled "Between Painting and Collage: Kurt Schwitter's Merz." Afterward, we invite you to the Art Museum to enjoy our spring exhibitions and a reception in the galleries.

New on View

The Museum regularly updates the galleries by exhibiting works previously not on view to create fresh, and sometimes surprising, juxtapositions and foster new discoveries. On view in the Peter B. Lewis Gallery are many of our best-loved works of art--including masterworks by Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol--as well as important but relatively unknown pieces by pioneering performance and land artist Dennis Oppenheim.

In Marquand Mather Court, visitors will enjoy three works by Frank Stella, Class of 1958: Plum Island (Luncheon on the Grass), Point of Pines, and River of Ponds II in the context of other important modern artists including Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, and Andy Warhol.

Explore a selection of our contemporary and modern art collections online.  

Late Thursdays

Italy and the Grand Tour

Thursday, March 17, 7-9 p.m.

Don't miss this special Late Thursday, taking place tomorrow night! Take your own Grand Tour without leaving Princeton by joining us in the Museum galleries for Italian wine, antipasti, music, and self-guided tours as we celebrate the arts and culture of eighteenth-century Rome and the new exhibition Lasting Impressions of the Grand Tour: Giuseppe Vasi's Rome.

King and Clown: Mimesis in 

Pre-Columbian Maya Art

Thursday, March 24, 4:30-6 p.m.

McCormick 106, reception to follow

In contrast to the youthful, comely representations of royalty during the Classic period (A.D. 300-900), Maya art also contains non-canonical, "grotesque" figures that were both a part of and peripheral to state discourses. What were these "grotesques" and how do they illuminate fundamental beliefs and experiences in Maya society? Drawing from figurative media from the Museum as well as archaeological collections, Halperin explores their ulterior, if not humorous, contributions to Maya ceremonial life.  

Lecture by Christina Halperin, lecturer in the Council of the Humanities, the Departments of Art and Archaeology and Latin American Studies, and Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Cosponsored by the Princeton University Art Museum, Department of Art and Archaeology, and the Program in Latin American Studies.

In the Museum Store

Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage is accompanied by a fully illustrated, 176-page catalogue published by the Menil Foundation, Inc., and distributed by Yale University Press, available at the Museum Store. Hardcover: $50, $45 Friends members; softcover: $40, $36 Friends members.

Kurt Schwitters, German, 1887-1948: Mz 371 bacco, 1922. Collage: paper on paperboard, 16 x 12.3 cm. The Menil Collection, Houston / photo by Hickey & Robertson. © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Fall Opening Celebration, 2010. Photo courtesy Princeton University Office of Communications, Denise Applewhite.

Dennis Oppenheim, American, 1938-2011: 2 Stage Transfer Drawing: Chandra to Dennis Oppenheim; 2 Stage Transfer Drawing: Dennis to Chandra Oppenheim, 1975. Diptych: hand-colored photographs, graphite and marker, 101.5 x 76 cm. Gift of Dr. Steven H. Kazan and Dr. Bernard S. Lichtenstein (x1994-1 a-b). © Estate of Dennis Oppenheim. Photo: Bruce M. White.

Frank Stella, American, born 1936: River of Ponds II, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, 306 x 307 cm. Gift of Paul W. H. Hoffmann, Class of 1947, and Camille Oliver-Hoffmann (1995-141). © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Bruce M. White.

Gaspar van Wittel, Dutch, 1652/53-1736: View of Piazza del Popolo, 1683. Oil on canvas, 71.9 x 124.8 cm. The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Maya, Campeche, Mexico, Late Classic, A.D. 600-800: whistle in form of a bearded dwarf carrying a shield on his right arm and an object in his left hand. Ceramic with traces of red, white and blue pigment, h. 12.5 cm., w. 6.7 cm., d. 6.5 cm. Gift of J. Lionberger Davis, Class of 1900 (y1968-75). Photo: Bryan R. Just.

Reproduction of all images is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without written permission from the copyright holder. © 2011 Princeton University Art Museum