When the Princeton University Art Museum opens to the public next year, at almost double the size of its original building, six new large-scale works by women and artists of color will have pride of place — visible beacons near the building’s perimeter, both indoors and out at this central crossroads on campus.
The artworks include four site-specific commissions by Diana Al-Hadid, Nick Cave, Jane Irish and Tuan Andrew Nguyen and two acquisitions by Jun Kaneko and Rose B. Simpson.
For a small viewing room cantilevered from one of the second-floor pavilions, Irish, who is based in Philadelphia, created “Cosmos Beyond Atrocity,” a Renaissance-style ceiling painting. Inside its architectural coffers, she painted vignettes of violence drawn from the museum’s art collection.