“Extraordinary Venture Forward gifts from Louisa Stude Sarofim and The Anschutz Foundation are enhancing the University’s eminence in American art history scholarship and teaching,” said President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83. “Their support for our spectacular new Art Museum will have an impact that reverberates far beyond Princeton’s campus.” 

The name of the American art section of the new museum was chosen by Sarofim to recognize John Wilmerding (1938-2024), the American art trailblazer who served from 1988 to 2007 as Princeton’s inaugural Christopher Binyon Sarofim ’86 Professor in American Art, the first endowed position exclusively devoted to the teaching of American art at any university. The professorship was also a gift from Sarofim. 

In Princeton’s Department of Art & Archaeology, Wilmerding served as department chair from 1992 to 1999 and established one of the leading programs for the study of American art in the country. A prolific and influential author, he examined major 19th- and 20th-century American artists including Fitz Henry Lane, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John F. Peto, George Bellows, Andrew Wyeth and Richard Estes, as well as themes of American landscape painting and cultural and intellectual history. As a curator, art collector, and later a benefactor and adviser to major American art museums, he was also an influential figure beyond Princeton and helped fundamentally define the field of American art history. At his death, Wilmerding’s important collection of pop art entered the Art Museum’s collections. 

“John Wilmerding was a transformative force in American art history,” said James Steward, the Nancy A. Nasher-David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director of the Princeton University Art Museum. “John helped lead what had been a marginalized field into the center, making innumerable contributions to our field and to our Art Museum, and we are deeply grateful for Louisa’s gift that names this spectacular new space in the Museum, and for The Anschutz Foundation gift that names the galleries within the Wilmerding Pavilion.”

“I had a deep admiration for John Wilmerding’s scholarship about the world of American art,” said Sarofim. “With my respect for him and my abiding interest in his subject matter, I thought it appropriate to give the gift in his honor.” 

When visitors to the new Art Museum enter the Wilmerding Pavilion on the second floor, they will encounter a greatly expanded experience of the Museum’s American art collections, including a more expansive definition of what constitutes American art to include Spanish Colonial art and Native American art. Compared to the old Museum, the new pavilion comprising galleries named for a gift from The Anschutz Foundation allows for a nearly five-fold increase in the number of works that can be displayed at one time. 

The five individual Anschutz Galleries are named for The Anschutz Foundation, the Anschutz family and the Anschutz-Hunt Family, including Philip and Nancy Anschutz, Sarah Shaw Anschutz ’93, Libby Anschutz ’96, William Philip Austin Hunt ’21 and Eleanor Marie Hunt ’25. 

“I deepened my love for American art during my time at Princeton,” said Sarah Shaw Anschutz, a member of The Anschutz Foundation’s board of directors. “My father has been collecting Western American paintings for nearly six decades, and I was fortunate to have grown up surrounded by the genre, so I was naturally drawn to the Art Museum’s collection of American art when I was a student. My family was honored to name the American galleries given our long connection to both American art and to Princeton.” 

The Wilmerding Pavilion and its Anschutz Galleries are “a quantum leap for American art within the museum,” said Karl Kusserow, the John Wilmerding Senior Curator of American Art for the Art Museum. “Including the greatly expanded representations of Native and Latin American art both within the pavilion and in its flanking galleries, there are now more than 300 works on display, compared to the 40 that were on view in the old building. Going forward, we can be more inclusive of art that represents North America broadly, while also incorporating meaningful displays of decorative art and works on paper.” 

The new galleries for American art allow juxtapositions among works in the Art Museum’s collections that would not have been possible in the past. “The new space affords opportunities to be expansive in exploring the conversations different works of art elicit, which in turn provoke different ideas and points of view,” Kusserow said. “If you think about where we are as a country, American history is at the epicenter of important debates about who and what we are, what culture is and who owns it.” 

Because of previous gifts of endowed funds from Princeton alumni and other friends, as well as gifts of art, the Art Museum has grown its collections of American art substantially in the past decade. “Due to the generosity of our donors, and our commitment to acquiring works that reframe and rebalance the collections and bring major voices past and present into the conversation, the Wilmerding Pavilion and the Anschutz Galleries allow us to show how dynamic our American collection is, now one of the finest in the nation,” said Steward. 

The new Princeton University Art Museum will open to the public on Oct. 31, with a 24-hour open house that will welcome visitors to explore the galleries and feature such activities as family-friendly art making, a Halloween costume contest, film screenings, poetry readings, skygazing, a dance party, live performances, and storytelling and wellness activities. The public grand opening will launch a season of special exhibitions. The Art Museum website has details on the public opening, including dates for the inaugural exhibitions. 

The Venture Forward campaign, which successfully concluded June 30, 2025, supported the University’s strategic framework, and its fundraising and engagement initiatives aligned with the key focus areas of that plan: college access and affordability, financial aid, data science, bioengineering, the environment, the humanities and other important areas of inquiry that characterize Princeton’s commitment to the liberal arts.