Princeton Reprise
A friend, Jane McKinley, is the musical director of The Dryden Ensemble, which specializes in performing 17th and 18th century music on period instruments. The group was playing an all Bach program in Princeton this afternoon, and so I hopped onto the New Jersey Transit from Penn Station, and was in the university town in about 80 minutes. I had planned time to visit the Princeton University Art Museum before the concert. It is a small teaching museum that is also open to the public, and free. I did not care very much for its small collection of 16th-18th century European (many Dutch) paintings, although I liked Abraham Bloemaert's The Four Evangelists (1612-15) for its inquiring lion looking so incongruous beneath the table. In the 19th to mid-20th century section, I was very taken by Gabriele Munter's Self-Portrait in front of an Easel , and by Edouard Vuillard's gorgeous Woman in an Interior (Madame Hessel at Les Clayes) . The lower galleries held collections of anci...