AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

Construction is currently underway on a new building for the Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM), which has been closed to the public since 2020 and is anticipated to reopen in 2025. This new building, located in the heart of Princeton’s historic campus, will feature reimagined gallery spaces for PUAM’s encyclopedic collections, updated classrooms for object-based teaching, designated areas for visible storage, and a brand new two-story conservation studio.

Prior to the demolition of the old building in 2021, thousands of objects needed to be removed from the galleries and the Museum’s surroundings. Among these were over a hundred large-scale and embedded works, including archaeological mosaics, architectural stone, and contemporary outdoor sculpture. Since many objects had been on long-term, continuous view since the 1960s, the Museum’s closure provided PUAM with a unique opportunity to address as many conservation needs as possible during the brief window before reinstallation.

PUAM’s small conservation team has been collaborating across Museum and University departments and with a wide network of skilled external conservators and specialists to safely remove these objects, complete multiple large-scale and complex treatments, and plan for their upcoming reinstall in the new building.

This presentation will discuss instances when projects did not go as planned, and how PUAM’s team worked together to resolve these issues. Topics will include unanticipated object discoveries that instigated major changes to display, unforeseen challenges stemming from missing or long-lost documentation, surprise construction variables that required complete reworking of install planning, and reflections on decision-making, teamworking, and project management.