Princeton University has announced that Samuel Hunter, professor of art and archaeology, emeritus, at the university, has died at 91. Before Hunter came to Princeton in 1969, he had already spent over 20 years as a curator, museum director, and professor of modern and contemporary art. As associate curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, Hunter organized the first major exhibitions of work by Jackson Pollock and David Smith at the museum. The author of over 50 books on modern and contemporary art, Hunter has been called “one of the pioneers of the study of modern art as an academic field”. (more…)

The Princeton University Art Museum has announced plans to install 12 billboards around the University, city and state, featuring the art of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.  The selected work, Untitled (1991), features an empty, but once occupied bed, evoking powerful emotions of intimacy and loss.  “Apart from its sheer beauty, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work invites us to consider issues of love and searing loss, and to become more aware of the meaning of private emotion and public space,” says Museum director James Steward. “In an age in which the scourge of AIDS remains with us globally, Felix’s immersive vision remains essential, and is a potent reminder of how this disease ravaged the art world twenty years ago.”  (more…)