A Great Summer

August 17, 2011

Thanks to you--and to our many friends throughout the region, as well as visitors from across the country and around the world--this year's summer programming has been a great success. More than 550 guests enjoyed the July 28 celebration of our summer exhibitions, while another 800 celebrated at our farewell-to-summer picnic on August 4!

We'll be back with a new season of Late Thursday programming in September. Mark your calendar now to help us kick off the fall season at our 3rd annual Nassau Street Sampler on Thursday, September 15.

Save the Date

Saturday, September 10, 5 p.m.

McCosh Hall 10

Join us for a community gathering to celebrate MEMORY AND THE WORK OF ART, a yearlong, community-wide investigation into the power of the arts to shape our cultural memory. Cartographies of Time guest curators Anthony T. Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, and Daniel Rosenberg, associate professor of history at the University of Oregon, will discuss the role visual forms have played in the ways in which we visualize history and the passing of time. A reception will follow in the Museum.

Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline (hardcover) is available in the Museum Store.

$50.00; Friends member $45.00 

Exhibition Highlight

On view in The Life and Death of Buildings

Through November 6

Beginning in 1862, successive federal Homestead Acts encouraged settlement of the American prairie by granting land to those who could stake a claim and live on-site for five years. With the advent of Rural Free Delivery in 1902, and of postcard-backed photographic paper a few years later, itinerant photographers began offering homesteaders a way to mail an image and a word to far-off loved ones. In recent decades, claim-shack postcards have gradually emerged from albums and attics to tell a collective story of self-reliance, house-pride, and westward migration. Discover this compelling story in The Life and Death of Buildings.

$40.00; Friends member $36.00

Must See in the Museum

On view in The Bunnell Decades

Through October 23

Beahan and McPhee's subject is landscape--imagery about land and its adaptation, history, and meaning. The collaborative artists found a vivid emblem of the modern American West--where water is money and power--in the mock-volcano at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. It erupts five times each night, circulating 119,000 gallons of water per minute and reducing a primeval symbol of energy to a stage-managed floor show.

Just for Friends

Attention Museum members: Do you want to join us for a visit to scenic Storm King Art Center and Dia:Beacon? Learn about the history and artistic legacy that permeates the streets of Harlem? Visit private collections and artists' studios hidden in your own backyard? Watch your mailbox for information about our exciting fall day trips!

Only Museum members can sign up for these fantastic opportunities. Not a member? Join today and you'll receive a personal invitation to travel with the Friends!

MEMORY AND THE WORK OF ART is a collaborative investigation into the relationship between the arts and cultural memory.

Distinguished Lecture Series 

Exhibitions 

Performances and Concerts 

Readings and Lectures 

Credits (top to bottom):

Princeton University Art Museum. Photo: Bruce M. White.

Visitors enjoy a farewell-to-summer picnic. 

Petrus Apianus, German, 1495-1552: Astronomicum Caesareum, 1540, detail. Bound printed book with hand-colored woodcut illustrations, 45.4 x 32.3 x 3.3 cm. William H. Scheide Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. 

Unknown photographers, American: Homesteaders with claim shacks, ca. 1907-25. Gelatin silver print on postcard paper, 8.8 x 13.8 cm. Collection of Michael Williams. Image courtesy Michael Williams. 

Virginia Beahan, American, born 1946, and Laura McPhee, American, born 1958: Artificial Volcano Erupting, Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1995. Chromogenic print, 47.2 x 59.7 cm. Museum purchase, gift of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (1995-386). © 1995, Virginia Beahan and Laura McPhee / photo by Bruce M. White. 

Interior view (window detail), Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, 2003. Photo: © Richard Barnes.

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