American Art
The American Art collection includes more than 25,000 paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, decorative arts, and new media from the American hemisphere. The earliest paintings in the Zimmerli’s American collection date to the late eighteenth century, after New Brunswick and Rutgers University—then called Queen’s College—were established on Lenape land. Paintings and sculpture in the collection from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reflect the influence of local traditions and European academic training, as well as the development of an international art market catering to a largely wealthy clientele. Recent acquisitions of work by artists such as Chakaia Booker, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Coco Fusco, Geoffrey Hendricks, Roberto Lugo, Fanny Sanín, George Segal, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Joan Snyder, and David Wojnarowicz have significantly increased the representation of women, artists with roots in the Caribbean and Latin America, and local artists, including those who taught or studied at Rutgers. There is also a growing collection of contemporary prints and photographs with examples of work by Melvin Edwards, Catherine Opie, Juan Sánchez, Cindy Sherman, and Carrie May Weems, as well as examples of vernacular, fashion, and social documentary photography.
