High School's Numina Gallery Receives Art Archives from Princeton University

Candace Braun

Along with a new gym, media center, and state-of-the-art auditorium, Princeton High School has something else to look forward to: boxes and boxes of archived photographs from Princeton University's art and archaeology department.

Approximately 30,000 mounted art photographs that had been used by the University's students for art history classes have now been donated to the high school's Numina Gallery, a student-run gallery exhibiting work from both professional artists and students.

Numina, which was established in 2000 by a group of students and their teacher, John Kavalos, began receiving parts of the University's art archives soon after its establishment. Mr. Kavalos received a call from Ben Kessler, the former director of the visual resources collection in the art and archeology department at the University, offering a portion of the department's archives for student use at the high school. The University was switching to a digital format, and would no longer have use for the archives, he said.

Now, after weeding through the archives, and keeping only those works of intrinsic value, the University will be handing over almost its entire collection, said Trudy Jacoby, the current director of the visual resources collection.

Wonderful Collaboration

"It's a wonderful collaboration, where [the University] is getting rid of something we're no longer using, and [Numina] gets some great archives to study from," said Ms. Jacoby.

She said the collection spans the entire history of art, encompassing everything that has been taught to University art students over several decades. Since Princeton's is the oldest art history department in the country, Ms. Jacoby said this will be a marvelous source of information for high school students.

"Some of the [art] goes back to handwriting with fountain pens," said Mr. Kavalos. "It's the history of world art."

Mr. Kavalos said he was so anxious to receive the donation from the University, he had accepted the archives before knowing exactly what he was going to be receiving. Now, with a room filled with filing cabinets and boxes of art photographs, the art teacher said his plan is to have future art students study and archive the works, which will eventually be available for public view.

A New Space

Due to construction, Numina is temporarily without a workspace, and therefore out of commission for the time being, Mr. Kavalos said.

"We've been kind of in a hiatus," he said.

But new construction will bring an "alternative space" to be used for the gallery, as well as other student activities, such as science fairs and the annual student exhibition.

The new space is scheduled to be complete by this summer, Mr. Kavalos said, well ahead of the two-year time frame for completion of the overall facility.

This is because Numina wants to get back into exhibiting artists' work as soon as possible, with a rather large exhibition planned for October 22.

The gallery has been invited to take part in the Transcultural New Jersey Statewide Initiative, a series of exhibitions, educational programs, public events, and community projects that will take place throughout New Jersey this year.

Spearheaded by Rutgers University, the project was created to "document the creative achievements of underrepresented non-European artists in order to recognize and examine how they are shaping culture and communities in New Jersey."

The first exhibition began in mid-December at the Paul Robeson Gallery at Rutgers University, where it will remain until March 19. It will then move on to other area galleries and museums, including the Hunterdon Museum of Art, New Jersey Center for Visual Arts, Newark Museum, Jersey City Museum, and the New Jersey State Museum. The exhibition will be held at Princeton High School from October 22 through November 19.

"We weren't able to book artists for awhile with everything in hiatus," said Mr. Kavalos, "But now we're planning for this exhibition in October."

While Numina has had renowned artists in the past, such as print-maker Judith Brodsky and painter Mel Leipzig, this will be the first time the gallery has participated in a statewide exhibition with prestigious galleries.

"In the new space, they are building a really wonderful facility for the gallery," said Mr. Kavalos. "Everyone's excited; I know I am."