Heather Seagroatt, executive director of Gift Planning, welcomed guests and thanked them for their generosity to the University through their planned gifts. She also recognized the members of the Planned Giving Advisory Council and the Gift Planning class chairs who were in attendance and thanked them for their service. 

Seagroatt then introduced Steward, who has served as director of the museum since 2009 and led the design, fundraising, construction and curation of the new museum facility, which opened in October 2025. He directs a staff of more than 170 that oversee collections of approximately 117,000 works of art that span the globe and more than 5,000 years of human history. In addition, Steward serves as lecturer with the rank of professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology and is a faculty fellow of Rockefeller College and an honorary member of the Classes of 1967, 1970 and 1976. 

Steward began his presentation, titled “Reflections on Making a New Museum for Princeton,” by extending his gratitude to alumni and friends, noting that philanthropic gifts provided two-thirds of the cost of the museum project. After providing a brief history of the University’s museum, Steward shared some of the value propositions that guided the decision to make the new museum, including to keep it at the physical heart of the campus where it would serve, he said, “as a kind of town square for both the campus and the broader communities around us.” He noted that one of the key aspirations was to find ways architecturally to overcome traditional distinctions across cultures and collections. 

Using images of the museum and its collections in his slideshow, Steward highlighted how architecture shapes the visitor experience in the new building, discussing highlights such as the monumental set of mosaics at the entrance and, throughout the museum’s exhibition space, a “kind of dialogue among volumes and materials” that “entices the visitor to continue on their journey to keep looking and discovering the next space and to hopefully overcome the phenomenon of museum fatigue,” he said. 

As a town square, Steward said, the idea was to create barrier-free experiences of art, citing free admission, extended gallery hours and the varied approach to how collections are installed as ways to engage visitors. Two creativity labs, he said, have drawn visitors of all ages; “I think that in the first five months we had something like 1,700 hours of drop-in art-making activity,” he said. 

Steward closed his presentation with notes on the critical acclaim the new museum has garnered, including its inclusion on TIME’s 2026 list of the greatest places in the world. Steward answered questions from the audience, including about the rich color palette used in the museum’s interior spaces and the glass bridges over archaeological mosaics embedded in the floor. 

Watch Steward‘s seminar below. 

Steward’s presentation was preceded by a performance by the Katzenjammers, who delighted attendees by singing Princeton’s “Going Back to Nassau Hall” and the Beatle’s “Blackbird,” before leading alumni and friends in “Old Nassau.” Enjoy the performance below.