Art Museum loans treasures to museums around the world

The Princeton University Art Museum, a multifaceted, multi-styled, and multi-era-d museum is an easily recognizable and completely unavoidable building on campus. Its dominant position in the center of central campus ensures a constant flood of students and teachers hurrying past it.

However, the only guaranteed and consistent visitors to this eminent edifice are a small percentage of the University: Art history students and majors, hopeful applicants, alumni and the museum staff. True to the nature of the ever-busy Princetonian, many no doubt pass by with their heads down. If you are one who does not venture into the artistic menagerie often or ever, here is all you need to know about the museum and more.

The museum was founded in 1890, receiving a prodigious jump start from William Cowper Prime, a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Princeton alumnus, who generously donated the Trumbull-Prime Collection of art and artifacts. The art was placed in the Romanesque Revival building designed by A. Page Brown in what is roughly the present location of the museum.

McCormick Hall, the headquarters of the Department of Art and Archeology was added in 1922 to the south side. In 1963, during a massive out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new campaign, the A. Page Brown building was torn down, McCormick Hall was enlarged and the museum was rebuilt by the internationally lauded Mitchell/Giurgola firm, completed in 1989. The Museum and art history department now stand, an amalgam of styles, in their current location.

In recent years, the Museum has been particularly dedicated to reinventing itself as both an educational facility and a premier art museum. Susan Taylor, the Director of the Museum, started with a move so simple and obvious that it was never thought of before; she changed the name from The Art Museum, Princeton University to The Princeton University Art Museum. By connecting the museum more explicitly to the university she emphasized both the educational prowess and superior quality synonymous with Princeton. In terms of practicality, it is also easier to look up in a phone book or museum directory.

However, this all means nothing if you have not been inside. If you find the museum impressive and intimidating from the outside, it is nothing compared to what is housed inside. The permanent collection of the museum boasts over 60,000 pieces, not including several thousand from a joint Harvard-Princeton archeological dig in Antioch, of which Princeton is in charge of protecting and maintaining.

In addition, the Pearlman collection, an impressive Impressionist assortment, is on extended loan, as is the Schorr family's modern art collection. In general, the art is both permanent and borrowed. What is borrowed comes from extended loans or brief loans from museums or private collectors; what is permanent is either purchased by the museum with private or educational funds or donated by alumni. John B. Elliott '51 bequested 700 pieces of art, including an assortment of Chinese calligraphy works, and the Fowler-McCormick fund has allowed the curators to acquire many pieces.

Donations are always accepted and put on display if a particular piece fills gaps in a certain collection or highlights a certain period. For most pieces, however, there is just not enough room to display them all. In fact, only 11percent of the museum's art is on display at one time. In part, this is also because a significant percentage of the museum's collection is works on paper that, because of potential UV damage, have to be rotated frequently. The Pearlman collection includes many Cezanne watercolors that are on display only every 10 years.

Surprisingly, a hefty number of pieces are fakes. More surprisingly, Princeton bought them knowing this. As Maureen McCormick, Chief Registrar of the Museum explained, the purpose of purchasing known fakes is twofold; firstly, it takes them off the market and out of the hands of naïve buyers; secondly, they are useful when educating students and making them connoisseurs of real art. She revealed that some pieces were excellent renditions and others were horrible and obvious attempts; they own both.

These seemingly unworthy purchases highlight the most important feature of the museum; its primary purpose is to be an educational facility. It is not a coincidence that the Department of Art and Archaeology is in the same building; the museum wants to be as instrumental in teaching as the teachers themselves. The curators and Taylor often display pieces because a professor wants to lecture on them. If a certain class is being offered that semester, all of the important or well-known art from that era is not lent out, but stays ready to be put on display. Most recently, one of the Renaissance panels was flipped over so that the Italian Renaissance Painting and Sculpture class could observe the technique of panel painting in the 1400s.

The curators' main job is to buy art and coordinate exhibits for the pieces. There is are Asian Art, Western Art, Ancient Art, Ancient Americas Art, Drawings, Photography and Educational curators for the Museum. Mostly, when the art is not donated by an alumni or collector or purchased from smaller galleries and dealers, the curators communicate with other museums.

Princeton loans and receives pieces from all calibers of museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the National Gallery in London. Currently, several Ancient Americas pieces are in the Aztec exhibit at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Monet's water lilies are out of the museum on loan as well, but hopefully will be back in time for the Neoclassicism through Impressionism art course in the spring.

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How do these pieces, as valuable as a Monet, make it out of the country and back again safely? The process is complicated, expensive and highly scientific. If one wanted to send a piece to the Louvre in Paris, for example, the museum staff of preparators would take down the painting and pack it in a custom wood crate. The custom crate is sealed in a polyethylene container which creates a microclimate that will act as a buffer from the elements. A data logger is placed inside the crate to monitor and stabilize the temperature. The container is then placed in another, larger container and surrounded by polyethylene foam.

This foam is calculated according to the weight and volume of the box inside because the foam only has a certain amount of "give" and won't protect the piece correctly unless calculated precisely. The outside crate is then covered in weather resistant seal, and painted. After this initial process, the piece still has to be shipped across country.

Ironically, the most expensive part of this several-thousand-dollar venture is the ground transportation from campus to JFK airport. At the airport, it either goes on a combination passenger/ freight plane or a freight plane. It is always accompanied by either the curator responsible for it or the museum Registrar.

Sometimes, if the object is small, a seat is bought for it on the plane, and the accompanier brings it via passenger plane. Princeton, always accommodating and understanding, asks only that all traveling costs are covered in addition to an extremely modest fee, when they lend out a piece. Given the apparent quid pro quo nature of museums, they hope that, in return, the museums will not charge them a lot when Princeton wants to borrow something from them.