Indian, Mana Lalji, ca. 1860. Opaque watercolor and gilt on paper, 13 7/8 x 9 7/16 in. Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund.

PRINCETON, NJ.- This summer the Princeton University Art Museum features 50 exceptional recent acquisitions in a special installation that underlines both the continuing ambition of the Museum’s collecting activities and the universal scope of its collections. The exhibition, Faces and Facets, includes works by such artists as Jules Olitski, Philip Pearlstein, Bridget Riley, Florian Schmidt, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Smithson, John Trumbull, Rembrandt, Hannah Wilke and Hale Woodruff; Greek, Japanese and Native American ceramics; ancient Cypriot and Pre-Columbian sculpture; a Korean six-panel folding screen; a French medieval architectural fragment; Chinese, Indian, Japanese and African works on paper; and French, British and American photography. 

Drawn from the works that have entered the Princeton University Art Museum collections since 2010, the installation will be on view from July 6 to Aug. 18, 2013, and represents but a small selection of the hundreds of gifts and purchases that have recently entered the Museum’s holdings. 

“The past few years have brought an abundance of stunning and distinguished new objects that complement the Museum’s comprehensive holdings in innumerable ways,” said Princeton University Art Museum Director James Steward. “While we often feature new acquisitions throughout our galleries, this seemed an auspicious moment to unveil a number of outstanding works of art in a special installation offering surprising insights and juxtapositions.” 

Faces and Facets is divided into four thematic sections: “Assemblage” examines how the disparate elements of a work of art can be as meaningful as the final configuration; “Faces and Facets” traces the varying ways that “portraits”—whether of a person or an object—both shape and are shaped by the viewer’s understanding of the world; “Revealing and Concealing” ponders the narratives, visual layers and data that are alternately encoded or exposed in works of art; and “Symmetry” plays with the idea of how balance, regularity, and repetition can either offer pleasing compositions or suggest the opposite—asymmetry and disorder—to achieve a particular effect. 

Bridget Riley, British, born 1931, Untitled [Based on "Primitive Blaze"], 1962. Screenprint on cream wove paper; sheet: 45.7 x 45.7 cm (18 x 18 in.); mount: 49 x 49 cm. Museum purchase, Felton Gibbons Fund. 2012-83 © Bridget Riley 2012. All rights reserved / photo: Bruce M. White

Kurt Schwitters, German, 1887–1948, Untitled from Merz Portfolio 3, 1923. Photolithograph in dark gray ink. sheet: 55.2 x 44.7 cm. Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund 2011-33. © Kurt Schwitters, Artists Rights Society (ARS) NY

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Self Portrait with Plumed Cap and Lowered Sabre, 1634. Etching and drypoint, 5 x 4 1/2 in. Gift of Thomas F., Class of 1957, and Ada Deuel. 2011-102.

Hannah Wilke (1940–1993), S.O.S. Starification Object Series, 1974. Vintage gelatin silver print, 7 x 5 in. Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund.

Cecil Beaton, British, 1904–1980: Marlene Dietrich. Gelatin silver print, 19.2 x 17.3 cm. Gift of Remak Ramsay, Class of 1958 (2011-174) © Estate of Cecil Beaton.

Greek, attributed to the Theseus Painter, Black-figure skyphos: symposium of Hermes and Herakles, ca. 490 B.C. Ceramic, 10 x 11 3/16 x 15 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. Museum purchase, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund by exchange, and the Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund.