Inner Sanctum: Memory and Meaning in Princeton's Faculty Room at Nassau Hall takes viewers inside Princeton University’s historic Nassau Hall to explore the Faculty Room’s role as the symbolic center of Princeton and venerable repository of its institutional memory, and looks at how the room and its portrait collection both reflect and helped shape the University’s identity. Located at the heart of the Princeton campus, the Faculty Room served as a prayer hall, library, and museum—as well as the seat of the U.S. government for a few critical months in 1783—until University President Woodrow Wilson had it remodeled in 1906 for executive and ceremonial use, installing a remarkable collection of portraits depicting University founders, American presidents, British monarchs, clergymen, scholars, scientists and others. The exhibition traces the Faculty Room’s changing function and symbolic role, while the diverse portraits on its walls tell the story of Princeton's evolution from a small school of dissident theologians to the world-renowned research university it is today.

Inner Sanctum is on view Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Sunday, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Sidney Edward Dickinson, American, (1890-1980)
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), Class of 1879, University President (1902-1910), 1929
Oil on canvas
Gift of William Church Osborn, Class of 1883, and friends
(Photo: Bruce M. White)

Devoted to the surprising and diverse tradition of nested imagery, Pictures of Pictures explores the ingenious way in which artists create one picture within another. Drawn from the Museum's collections, the fifty objects in this exhibition include prints, photographs, collages, paintings, and sculptures, and span centuries, ranging from a seventeenth–century Alsatian still-life of precious objects to a Japanese woodblock print of a merchant and his painted fans. The exhibition also casts fresh light on the postmodern practice of appropriation by placing classics of the genre side-by-side with their inspiration. Pictures of Pictures, with its examination of paintings of paintings, sculptures of sculptures, drawings of drawings, and photographs of photographs, comes together to offer an experience that is at once witty and profound.

Chinese, Modern period, 1912–present
Wang Ruihui
Grandparents and Grandchildren Before a Portrait of Mao
Gouache on paper, 57 x 43.2 cm.
Museum purchase
[2003-28] (Photo: Bruce M. White)

Presenting selected paintings, prints, ceramics, lacquers, and photographs, this exhibition aims to showcase various renditions of nature—birds, insects, beasts, flower, and plants—in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean art. The works on display exemplify different ways in which nature is represented, from observation based studies to symbolic devices of auspicious messages, manifestations of virtue, to ornamental motifs. A perfect outing for summer, this exhibition offers a diverse representation of nature the rich meanings embedded within that is both visually pleasant and intellectually fulfilling.

Chinese, Ming dynasty, 1368-1644
Wu Weiqian
Manchurian Crane, Deer, Pine, Plum, Rocks, and Flowers, ca. 16th century
Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk, 177.7 x 94.2 cm.
Gift of DuBois Schanck Morris, Class of 1893
[y1947-231] (Photo: Bruce M. White)

Centered upon an image of the Remembrance bell erected on Princeton’s campus in memory of the 13 alumni who tragically lost their lives on September 11, 2001, this exhibition features new gifts from the artist as well as older favorites from the Museum's and University's collections, highlighting one of the great ceramic artists of the twentieth century. Contemporary artist Toshiko Takaezu's ceramics have many unique attributes. She is perhaps best known for closing the vessel form to render it useless as a functional object, transforming into solely an aesthetic sculpture. In this seemingly simple act, Takaezu's pieces gain presence and resonates sound that lingers into memory.

Toshiko Takaezu, American, born 1922
White Tamarind, 1970s
Stoneware, 89 cm.
Gift of the artist
©1970, Toshiko Takaezu
[2008-13] (Photo: Bruce M. White)

Starburst, the first-ever museum survey of the "New Color Photography" in the 1970s, stars 18 artists who fast-forwarded their medium out of its black-and-white past and put it at the center of contemporary art. The exhibition features generous bodies of work by eighteen artists, from the still-prominent, such as Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Jan Groover, and Joel Sternfeld, to key figures of the period, including Eve Sonneman, Neal Slavin, John Pfahl, and Barbara Kasten. Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Presented with the generous support of The Carl Jacobs Foundation, Fund Evaluation Group, and LPK. Further support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art, the Frances E. and Elias Wolf Fund, and the Partners and Friends of the Princeton University Art Museum.

Stephen Shore, American, born 1947
Sault Ste.-Marie, Ontario, August 13, 1974, 1974
Chromegenic print, 20 x 24 in.
© Stephen Shore, Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

Screened from dusk to 11:00 p.m. every day.

Installed on the Museum's front lawn, Doug Aitken's monumental video installation Migration (Empire) (2008) reflects poignantly on the experience of migration, a subject steeped in American history, as well as on the loss of open spaces and protected wilderness. Projected onto a custom-designed billboard, the video will be on view from dusk to 11:00 p.m. every evening. Migration (Empire) was recently acquired by the Museum, where it joins a growing body of video by contemporary artists.

Doug Aitken (American, born 1968). Migration (Empire), 2008.
Single channel video projection with billboard (steel and PVC projection screen);
24 minute loop; billboard: 30.7 x 46.7 x 11.4 m. Princeton University Art Museum
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund.
©2008, Doug Aitken / Image courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York.