Embedded objects find a new home in the new Princeton University Art Museum | Inside Princeton

Mar 02, 2025

Among the most highly anticipated moments in the process of returning these monumental works to the new Museum have been the placement of several of the Museum’s ancient Roman mosaic pavements, excavated in the early twentieth century near Antioch, in present-day Turkey, as part of a multinational partage excavation project. Photo courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum.

As the opening of Princeton University Art Museum’s new facility draws closer, the space has begun to transition from construction site to museum—capable of housing the many extraordinary works of art from the collections that have been off view since 2020. The first pieces to grace the interior of the new building include a number of works being physically embedded into the architecture of the facility. Their installation marks the culmination of years-long collaborations between teams of specialist conservators, art handlers, curators, registrars and more.

Michael Jacobs, senior gallery designer and manager of exhibition services, recently spoke about the steps taken—beginning with the deinstallation of the artworks that had previously been embedded in the former building—to ensure the smooth incorporation of objects such as a sixteenth-century Mallorcan staircase and a medieval stone window from the Vaucluse region of France, as well as a series of ancient Roman mosaics, into the fabric of the new Museum. “We saw plenty of opportunities in the newly designed spaces to bring back a lot of these objects to enable easy visual access to them,” notes Jacobs. Over the course of about a year, Museum Director James Steward, Jacobs, subject-area curators, and other Museum staff took part in conversations with the architectural design team to consider how space and artwork might match up to create compelling sites for some of the Museum’s most important objects.

As those conversations were taking place, all the works previously embedded within the architecture of the old facility had to be removed and then conserved by dedicated teams of external conservators and specialists working in close collaboration with Elena Torok, the Museum’s associate objects conservator, and Bart Devolder, chief conservator. Kelly Caldwell, senior conservator and director of conservation at EverGreene Architectural Arts, and Adam Jenkins, conservator at Adam Jenkins Conservation Services (AJCS), both emphasized the importance of having been involved in the project from the time of reinstallation to the return of the conserved works to the new Museum. By understanding how works such as the Mallorcan staircase and the Roman mosaics had been fitted together and embedded into place decades ago—sometimes using techniques that would be regarded as outdated today—Caldwell, Jenkins, and their teams were able to build conservation treatment plans and create road maps for the objects’ future reinstallation. Alexia Hughes, chief registrar and manager of collection services, was involved throughout the process and worked to ensure the safe journey of numerous large, heavy, and fragile works of art to various conservation studios across the Northeast.

The process of returning the works to the new Museum facility and laboriously and safely re-embedding them in the new architecture began in September 2024. In recent weeks, as these works were transported into and installed in the new building, Museum photographers Jeffrey Evans and Joseph Hu documented the specialist installation teams at work.