The Princeton University Art Museum has acquired almost 5,000 drawings by Princeton architect and designer Michael Graves, who died in 2015.

James Steward, the director of the Princeton University Art Museum, said the drawings, which come to the museum from Graves’s estate, span the entire range of his subject matter and design concerns, and will serve as an important resource for researchers, designers and museum audiences.

“We are pleased to be able to preserve and share these important drawings, which document numerous projects and reflect Michael Graves’s manifold interests and talents, here at the museum, where he was known as family, and with our global audiences,” Steward said. 

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A variety of materials including pen and ink, charcoal, graphite, colored pencil, watercolor and pastel were used for the drawings that Princeton has acquired. The collection includes drawings of historic monuments from his 1960s fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, pencil and ink referential drawings in sketchbooks, quick iterative design studies on yellow tracing paper, and meticulously colored building elevations. Together, the drawings in the collection form the visual archive of Graves’s work, revealing both his classical training and his commitment to draftsmanship – something Graves advocated for strongly in his teaching.

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