Renaissance: A New Museum for Princeton

A richly illustrated retrospective history of the Princeton University Art Museum
A commemorative 2025 edition marking the opening of the university’s new museum

Renaissance: A New Museum for Princeton reflects on the history of the Princeton University Art Museum as one of the oldest collecting institutions in North America and the role of its architecture in campus making. The 2025 opening of its new building affirms the museum’s long-standing commitment to considering works of art in the original as essential tools for understanding the wider world. Designed by Adjaye Associates in association with Cooper Robertson, the new facility positions the museum at the heart of both campus and civic life as a center for the public humanities. With dramatically expanded space for the display, conservation, and study of the museum’s globe-spanning collections, the building is shaped from nine interlocking ＂pavilions＂ to weave its dramatic volumes successfully into a complex built and natural environment, creating spaces to amplify the exceptional diversity of objects to be found within.

Renaissance: A New Museum for Princeton unites stunning new photography by Richard Barnes with a series of illuminating essays. Museum Director James Christen Steward offers a richly illustrated investigation of the institution’s history from the eighteenth century to the present as one of building, effacing, and building anew. Renowned architecture critic Paul Goldberger provides a consideration of the building in relation to museum architecture and design, while University Architect Ron McCoy reflects on the museum’s architecture and its contribution to the life and built environment on the Princeton campus. Art critic Mark Stevens, Princeton Class of 1973, shares an evocative meditation on what it means to have such a museum at Princeton, and award-winning poet Susan Stewart contributes an original poem for the publication.

Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum

James Steward is the Nancy A. Nasher-David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director of the Princeton University Art Museum. Paul Goldberger is a Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for The New York Times and a columnist for The New Yorker. Ron McCoy is University Architect at Princeton University. Mark Stevens is an art critic and the coauthor of de Kooning: An American Master, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Susan Stewart is a poet, critic, and translator whose books include The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture. Richard Barnes is an award-winning photographer whose work can be found in numerous public and private collections, including MoMA, the Met, and the Whitney.