Redesigned Seminar Turns Museum into a Classroom

For decades Princeton has offered a freshman seminar that takes students behind the scenes at the Princeton University Art Museum, but holding it in the new building for the first time this spring added new dimensions to the class.

“Compared to teaching in the previous building, it’s just phenomenal having all of the collections, galleries on the same floor,” said Veronica White ’98, the museum’s curator of teaching and learning. “And if one wants to draw a comparison in another pavilion, you just walk over and you can traverse those time periods and cultures, and do that very, very easily,” Caroline Harris, the museum’s senior associate director for education, created the course 20 years ago, and since 2020 she and White have taught the class together.

Harris said it’s been exciting to see the “way the class has changed over time as the galleries and exhibitions have changed. With the opening of the building, everything feels fresh, and objects I have been sharing with students for decades have taken on new associations and nuances of meaning.”

Over the years, during the pandemic and while the new museum was under construction, they taught on Zoom, in the two galleries in town, and across campus using outdoor art.

This spring, White said the course was redesigned “very much with the idea of welcoming students into” the new building.

Every Wednesday afternoon, students spent three hours of class time in the galleries getting an in-depth look at everything that goes into running the museum, from the arrangement and lighting of art to the written material displayed alongside it to questions about provenance. Guest speakers included curators, lighting designers, and conservators. The class of 13 students even got a tour by museum director James Steward.

For the midterm, students wrote papers on repatriation, and for the final, they wrote papers critiquing an exhibition of their choosing.

“In this digital age, I feel like students appreciate even more the thinking about material, thinking about texture, seeing an artist, thinking about an artist’s hand,” said White. “You see the students light up, and that’s very rewarding.”

For Caroline Naughton ’29, the best part was intimate informal time with staff. One highlight was when Joanne Baron, curator and lecturer of art of the ancient Americas, spoke about a Maya drinking cup from the 600s known as the Princeton Vase. “She talked for maybe an hour straight, and … you could see how passionate she was about it,” said Naughton.

Naughton enrolled hoping “to find out everything that I could” about the museum, and she finished the semester feeling like “I’ve gotten that and more.”