https://artandarchaeology.princeton.edu/

Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, A&A Suite, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ (2026)

10/10/2026

The Program in Medieval Studies has begun the new academic year immersed in art!

Following a lunch seminar on the exhibition Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas with curators Laura Filloy Nadal and Julia Perratore, on September 26, with support from A&A, a group of students, staff, and faculty traveled to the Met Cloisters together with a course excursion for FRE 241/ MED 241 (“Spells, Recipes, and Potions in the French Middle Ages”) to visit the museum and tour the exhibition with Perratore. The show, on view through October 18, 2026, examines imagined creatures rendered in Europe and the Americas between 500 and 1500 C.E.

On October 2, Program Director Beatrice Kitzinger and Assistant Curator Scott Miller led a discussion of late medieval objects from the collection of Mike and Patricia O’Neill in one of the Museum’s object study rooms. The collection includes sculpture, painting and furniture and is a promised gift to the Princeton University Art Museum: expect the works to feature in many future classes and gallery installations.

Medieval Studies’ art-filled year will continue with lunch seminars by Laura Weigert (Nov. 9) and Beate Fricke (Nov. 12), and two museum excursions in the winter: look out for further announcements on a curatorial tour of the CUNY exhibition Know-How for a New Era: City Living/City Learning, ca. 1400–1550 on January 29 (Princeton is a lender to this show), and a bus trip to the Glencairn Cathedral and Museum outside Philadelphia on February 26. RSVP for all events and see further Program activities through the Medieval Studies website: medievalstudies.princeton.edu.

10/02/2026

A&A is thrilled to unveil Dana Corbo ’25’s “Mouth Piece,” a striking new commissioned series of paintings she created for our new suite in the Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton University Art Museum)

“I am so excited about this!” said Colleen Asper, Corbo’s primary adviser in the Visual Arts Program, who is bringing her painting classes to see the work later in the semester. “Working with Dana Corbo has been one of the highlights of my time at Princeton,” she continued. “As a painter she couples a ready understanding of how to create illusionistic form with a strong impulse to unmoor pictorial space. This play of opposites takes on a kind of physical comedy in her work in which the shock of the strange and the awkwardness of the familiar meet.”

Along with Corbo’s clear talent, her background in the department equipped her especially well for the task. “Dana has always been an artist, but she actually started out in the A&A department as an art history major before switching her focus to the practice of art,” her A&A adviser, Professor Bridget Alsdorf, explained. “She’s an immensely talented painter who draws on various subfields of art history in her work. For these reasons, among others, we thought she’d be an ideal artist to feature in our new office suite.”

“This project was a wonderful opportunity for me to reflect on my relationship with these art historians who were so instrumental in my education and artistic formation,” said Dana. “I remember all the times I stared at these professors transfixed, trying to absorb their every word. Art historians spend their careers analyzing artworks and the people who make them; what happens when an artist forges them back into artwork?”

Learn more about Dana Corbo ‘25’s work: past, present, and future: [email protected]

View Dana Corbo ‘25’s portfolio: www.danacorbo.com

10/02/2026

The fourth iteration of the week-long 2026 PITHOS (Princeton-Ioannina-Thessaly On-Site Seminars) program in Princeton, sponsored by the Department of Art and Archaeology and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, was another masterclass in collaborative scholarship!

Princeton faculty and graduate students joined their counterparts from the Greek Universities of Ioannina and Thessaly to share research methods, ideas, and results on the theme “Transitions and Turning Points,” exploring artistic, political, social, and cultural change in Greece.

This year’s Greek faculty leaders were Professors Andreas Vlachopoulos and Alexandros Mazarakis Anion, and from Princeton, Professor Nathan Arrington. Student participants were: from the University of Thessaly: Holly Bartlet Balicki, Parthena (Nena) Chatzitheodoridou, and Evangelia Kolofotia; from the University of Ioannina: Fotis Dovolis, Stamatia Gioti, and Pantelis Kyrkos; and from Princeton: Marie-Christine Levesque and
Ben Watts-Woolridge.

The group visited the Princeton University Art Museum with Professor Rachael DeLue, Nassau Hall with Princeton University Art Museum curator Karl Kusserow, the campus with Professor Basile Baudez, and the Princeton Battlefield, to learn about campus life, American history, and approaches in the United States to monuments and cultural heritage.

“I have found the PITHOS program to be a stimulating experience on both intellectual and personal levels,” said A&A participant Marie-Christine Levesque. “It facilitated meeting and learning about the work of colleagues from the Universities of Thessaly and Ioannina and associated faculty. As a result, my research benefited from their varied expertise and unique perspectives. The twofold nature of the event, in addition to the surrounding visits and workshops, laid solid foundations for the participants to continue our intellectual dialogue in the future.”

09/30/2026

Theory meets discovery every day in the A&A classroom.

Here’s what the classroom looked like in the month of September alone!

09/22/2026

Congratulations to Will Pedrick *26 — who started his new role as Assistant Professor of Art History down the road at Rutgers University–New Brunswick this fall!

“The first class I’m teaching at Rutgers is something I really love: Early Greek Art,” said Professor Pedrick. “A trip to the PUAM is in the works, and I’m excited to share the amazing collection of ancient objects with my students.”

We’re excited to welcome you (back)!

08/25/2026

We were thrilled to meet you at the Academic Expo – and we can’t wait to welcome you to our home base in the Princeton University Art Museum!

Join us —and make the ART Museum your classroom this semester.

ART courses in art history, the practice of art, and archaeology will change the way you look at the world. You’ll see!

08/05/2026

CALLING ALL PRINCETON STUDENTS! Make the ART Museum your classroom with Princeton’s inimitable art history immersion class: ART 100: “An Introduction to the History of Art: Meanings in the Visual Arts” (LA) — T, Th 9:35-10:25 am.

“It’s a syllabus of greatest hits!” says Professor John Sigmier.

The entire new Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton University Art Museum) becomes your classroom, and the full breadth of the Department of Art & Archaeology faculty shares their expertise.

Sigmier, who is an archaeologist and architectural historian of the Roman world, takes on the role of Maestro as leading art historians step in to explore each week’s theme from their area of specialization.

“We’ll encounter all kinds of different topics and perspectives across a broad temporal and geographic expanse, and each time the lecturer will be a subject matter specialist,” said Sigmier. “Not many introductory classes are like that!”

As you learn to examine a sampling of media—including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography and prints—and artistic practices from diverse historical periods, regions, and cultures, you will gain a new way of interpreting the world around.

“This is fundamentally a course about the power of images, and images are just as powerful today as they have been at any time and any place in history,” said Sigmier. “Learning about the history of art offers an opportunity to consider the impact of media and advertising (and even propaganda!) on our daily lives. These things are ubiquitous in our society, and being able to critically evaluate images and artifacts is a useful skill.”

Without a doubt, ART 100 will change the way you see the world.

Enroll in ART 100!

08/04/2026

Dispatch from the field! Mattia D’Acri and archeology minor Emily Hinczynski ’27 spent four weeks on the Torre Mordillo Archaeological Project in Calabria, Italy. Having participated in D’Acri’s course ART 309 “Italy Before Rome,” Hinczynski was thrilled to investigate the archaeological evidence. “This class is one of my favorites that I had taken at Princeton so far,” she said. “Already having a small background in the topic made actually going out and digging at TMAP all the more enriching to my studies and my future in archaeology.”

Located near the famous Greek city of Sybaris in southern Italy, the site was inhabited from the Middle Bronze Age until the 3rd century B.C.E. by Indigenous groups historically known as the Oenotrians and, later, the Brettians. This season, the team made progress in defining the size of a hut discovered last summer, and uncovered the remains of an additional hut. The exciting discovery of an earlier phase means another two or three seasons before the area is fully excavated.

“I hope that, in the near future, more Princeton students will have the opportunity to participate in the program,” said D’Acri.

Photos courtesy of Mattia D’Acri and the Torre Mordillo Archaeological Project.

08/03/2026

Calling all Princeton students! Join Professor Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Art & Archaeology Princeton U and African American Studies, PU) and Perrin Lathrop (Princeton University Art Museum) in ART 516/ HUM 516/ AAS 516 “Crafting the Nation: Art, Materiality and Independence in the Post-Colony” for the rare chance to learn through the exhibition “Clay Has Memory: Creative Lineages from Africa” curated by Lathrop. You’ll explore the development of arts and craft practices against the backdrop of movements for independence in the former British Empire. Throughout the semester you’ll meet artists, examine works, and even create your own.

Arabindan-Kesson hopes students gain “an embodied approach to their theoretical and historical work. To see how movements and ideas and processes for change form in and around art and artistic practice, and to experience this as thinkers and makers. To better grasp the meanings of materiality.”

Among highlights of the course, says Lathrop, “Students will learn to look at historical PUAM collection objects alongside art historians, curators, and contemporary artists. They will then have the opportunity to handle the materials and practice the processes they’ve examined themselves. In one session, we’ll look at a 1960s-era àdìrẹ indigo-dyed wrapper from Nigeria in the African art galleries and then head to PUAM’s Creativity Labs to learn to apply àdìrẹ patterns and immerse fabric in dye directly from renowned Nigerian artist and art historian Peju Layiwola.”

Enroll in ART 516/ HUM 516/ AAS 516!

07/24/2026

The Humanities Council features Professor Samuel Holzman’s “Retrospective Columns” and Professor Irene V. Small’s “The Organic Line” as books to read this summer!

Find Q&As with them both to learn about their writing process, the research questions that drive their thinking, and the impact of their work on the Humanities Council’s virtual Faculty Bookshelf.

“I was standing in the lobby of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki looking at the remains of a large Greek temple from about 500 BC, most of which is still buried under the traffic circle at Antigonidon Square. This temple has large Ionic column capitals, which are carved in two different sculptural styles on opposite faces. On one side, the spiraling volutes are convex and pillowy; on the other side they are concave and shadow rich. If an archaeologist found only one half of one of these capitals, they might propose a different date of construction. It got me thinking about the ways that ancient builders were conscious of older buildings around them and what that history meant to them.”

—Samuel Holzman on “Retrospective Columns” (Princeton University Press, 2025)

“The organic line gives us a new theoretical vocabulary for describing interstitial space. In this sense, it’s a portable concept. I hope that people will read this book who have a vested interest in modernism and its purchase for the present. But I also hope it acts as a user’s guide for thinking and making more broadly. Once you begin to read this book, you will start to recognize organic lines everywhere around you. It’s cognitive and epistemological, but also aesthetic and political. It’s certainly changed how I see the world.”

—Irene V. Small on “The Organic Line” (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University

10/10/2026

10/02/2026

10/02/2026

09/30/2026

09/22/2026

08/25/2026

08/05/2026

08/04/2026

08/03/2026

07/24/2026

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