Artworks of Princeton

Over the last couple of months I've been taking pictures of the public artworks that are scattered around Princeton, both on and off campus. I'd been aware of some of the more obvious pieces from previous visits (such as the "Marching Figures" outside the University Art Museum), however it turns out that the University has an extensive collection of outdoor sculpture which includes some more well-hidden works. So I began a little personal project to find and photograph as many as I could find.

My starting point was the 1995 online article "Strolling Among Sculpture on Campus" by Jennifer Sheppard, which gives a good overview of many of the pieces as well as hints on where they can be found. I also bought a copy of the "Sculpture of Princeton University" guidebook from the Art Museum shop, which cost around $5 and has drawings and more detailed descriptions for 24 of the works on campus. It also has a map which proved invaluable in locating many of the pieces.

As I've gone along, I've been adding the pictures to a set on Flickr called (unsurprisingly) "Princeton Artworks", as well as building an interactive Google map which shows where each of the artworks are, to the best of my abilities. On my wanderings I also came across what I considered to be artworks but which weren't in the book, for example the many tiger statues that are dotted around campus.

You can click on a marker below (or in a larger size map) to go on your own virtual tour:


View Larger Map

I think that the project made me look at the artworks in a different way than I might have just walking past them every day. Looking for interesting angles for my photographs also gave me a reason to spend more time looking at them, and I think that in some cases this made me appreciate them more - particularly the ones that I initially didn't find that interesting. Also, searching them out gave me an excuse to explore the campus and in doing that I stumbled across other things that I wouldn't otherwise have found.

It's hard to pick favourites, however if I really had to choose then Upstart 2 and Mastadon VI are probably the ones that I liked the most from the official collection. I also liked the metallic tiger statues outside the stadium - it was seeing pictures of these elsewhere that got me started. Of the "serendiptiously found" works, I think maybe Clouds Nine is the one that I would pick as my favourite. But really I think that all the artworks have something in them that I like - I didn't take pictures of the ones that didn't.

You could argue that the project isn't really complete: there were a few pieces that I wasn't able to find, such as Eduardo Paolozzi's "Marok-Marok Miosa" (I think it has been relocated or stored for now), and other sculptures or murals that could also be considered artworks. However for now I think it's enough. So I hope that you enjoy looking at the map and the pictures.