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Princeton University Art Museum to Showcase Recent Acquisitions

Exhibition Dates: July 7 through September 16, 2001

PRINCETON -- An exhibition of recent acquisitions will open Saturday, July 7, 2001, at The Art Museum, Princeton University.

"The summer exhibition, 'Recent Acquisitions,' features an exciting selection of over thirty recent gifts and purchases, all of which enhance and expand on the tremendous breadth and diversity of the Museum's collections," says Laura Giles, associate curator of prints and drawings, who organized the exhibition. Spanning over two millennia and executed in numerous media, the works on view range from ancient Chinese sculpture to contemporary photography.

The Museum's pre-Columbian collection includes a remarkable selection of ceramic figurines from the burial island of Jaina. Two recent additions to this group represent the highest level of ceramic figural sculpture achieved by the ancient Maya, and are larger than most Jaina pieces. The first sculpture represents an elaborately garbed Ballplayer, which has survived in mint condition with ample traces of polychrome. This work was purchased through the Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund in honor of Gillett G. Griffin, faculty curator of pre-Columbian and Native American art, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. The other sculpture, Figure of a Mayan Dignitary, also known as "The Orator," was given by Gillett G. Griffin in honor of Allen Rosenbaum, director emeritus of The Art Museum.

A pair of Han dynasty (206 B.C. - A.D. 220) funerary figures of red-garbed armored riders mounted on black steeds was given to the Museum by Simone Schloss, Class of 1979, from the Schloss Collection. Finely detailed in colored pigments, such unglazed ceramic figures were often placed in tombs in pairs or as part of larger processional groups.

Another major addition to the Museum's Asian collection is Revolution in Justice, which was acquired through the Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund. Painted in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution, this large work exemplifies a style developed in deliberate reaction against the elite or literati painting and calligraphy traditions in imperial China. In contrast to the personalized tradition of literati art, the new paintings were often anonymous, or, as in this example, signed by a factory division or collective group. Other deliberate reactions to past styles include the use of bright colors and an industrial calligraphy script now arranged horizontally to read from left to right.

The Museum's collection of Islamic art has been enriched by the recent acquisition of a ceramic bowl with "three-color" decoration inspired by Chinese pottery of the Tang Dynasty. Dating from the ninth or early tenth century and probably made in Iraq, the bowl was discovered by Emile Vignier, a French traveler who had a permit to excavate in Rhages, Iran, in the years before World War I. The purchase of this fascinating bowl, which demonstrates the strong influence of Chinese art at the western end of the Silk Road, was made possible by a generous gift from Elizabeth Ettinghausen in memory of her husband, Richard Ettinghausen, a renowned scholar of Islamic art and for many years a professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and chairman of the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A Dutch portrait by Cornelis Kruseman (1779 - 1857), given by Dr. and Mrs. Albert Rosenthal, is an example of the nineteenth-century northern European style called "classic" or, in Germany, "Biedermeier," that is increasingly appreciated but still underrepresented in American museums. Curatorial research has identified the sitter as Eduard van der Oudermeulen (1801 - 1853), who was Lieutenant in the Regiment of Horse Artillery (the "Gele Rijders"), Lieutenant Colonel in command of the Civic Guards of The Hague, where he was also a City Councilor.

A drawing by David Smith (1906 - 1965), purchased through the Laura P. Hall Memorial Fund, is the first work by this major twentieth-century sculptor to enter the Museum's collection. Although Smith considered sculpture his principal means of expression, the act of drawing was a fundamental and deeply personal aspect of Smith's creative process. Made during the 1950s, which was Smith's most inventive decade, as well as his most prolific as a draftsman, Untitled (1957) belongs to a large group of highly gestural and expressive drawings, which derived inspiration from Japanese calligraphy. This important acquisition not only enhances the Museum's collection of American drawings, but also serves as a perfect complement to Smith's polished stainless steel sculpture Cubi XIII (1963), belonging to the John B. Putnam, Jr. Memorial Collection at Princeton University.

George Segal's Wall Relief: Torso (1972), the gift of the artist, is a fine example of his signature technique of molding plaster on a living model's body, which is thereby rendered in all its specificity. Often on view since 1977, when it was lent as a promised gift to the William C. Seitz, Graduate School Class of 1955, Memorial Collection, it was formally given to the Museum in 2000, shortly before Segal's death.

In photography, the past year's acquisitions have built on many of the department's strengths, as well as introducing several new artists to the collection. Photographs by Mashisa Fukase and Shomei Tomatsu, consisting of complex narratives on post-war Japanese society, join the Museum's substantial holdings of contemporary photography from that country. Louis de Clerq's spare view of the gateway to the Egyptian temple at Karnak, made during his travels to the Middle East in 1859 - 60, is a premiere example of nineteenth-century French architectural photography.

Stephen Tourlentes and John Divola are both exploring the fringes of the contemporary urban landscape, in night views of maximum-security prisons and subtle color photographs of abandoned homes in the desert surrounding Los Angeles. Two radically different visions of the street are seen in photographs by the English artist Roger Mayne and Ray K. Metzker of Philadelphia. Mayne's dynamic image from 1956 seems barely able to contain the three leaping boys playing ball in the slums of Kensington, while Metzker's 1963 photograph of an anonymous pedestrian speaks with a carefully refined precision.

The exhibition will be on view through September 16.

The Art Museum is open to the public without charge. Free highlights tours of the collection are given every Saturday at 2:00 p.m. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and on Sunday from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. It is closed on Monday and major holidays. The Museum Shop closes at 5:00 p.m. The Museum is located in the middle of the Princeton University campus. Picasso's large sculpture Head of a Woman stands in front. For further information, please call (609) 258-3788.