Princeton

Visit to Princeton University

We went on a visit to Princeton University yesterday because my son is applying to colleges, and as he had the day off due to parent-teacher conferences, he decided he would like to visit Princeton. We arranged to meet my niece for lunch at the Center for Jewish Life. Having had a late-for-the-conference experience due to parking issues a few weeks ago, I now consider myself a Princeton parking expert, and we drove straight to Palmer Square Garage on Chambers Street. In the dripping wet we figured out where Clio Hall is, the place where the tour begins. The photos on top and bottom were taken in the sunny summer month of August – it did not look that bright in New Jersey yesterday, lots of rain. We did the tour (one other mother-son team joined us), and then we had the pleasure of my niece’s company at a kosher lunch at CJL. She seems to be enjoying Princeton, and I was pleased to hear she is taking French as one of her courses. She is the sister of the blogger in Norway.

So, now that I’ve left you with some of the details of my day, here’s some questions for you:

• If you’ve had a child leave home, how did it feel to have the first one leave?
• If you could apply to college now (all expenses paid), where would you go and what would you study?
• Have you been to Princeton?

Princeton Art Museum Visit

Last week my daughter, her friend and I went to the Princeton Art Museum. The museum is in the middle of the Princeton University campus, and it features Roman, Greek, European, modern and American art in its collection. The museum offered scavenger hunts for inquisitive children like my own, and the girls chose between Roman, Greek or American portraiture. We first went to the Roman room. After a few minutes of looking at mosaics and busts of people dead for about 2000 years, the girls declared the collection “creepy,” and we went back upstairs to try the American scavenger hunt.

The section with the American paintings was more appealing to them.

The life-size portrait of Elizabeth Allen Marquand, 1887 by John Singer Sargent is more captivating in real life. I would probably sit for hours and draw her, if I had the chance.

After a few minutes of doing the scavenger hunt, my daughter and her friend decided to use the backs of the hunt papers to draw a distinguished family from the 18th century, The Hartley Family with lovely silk dresses.

There’s sculpture and architecture to be seen outside the museum, on the Princeton campus, but I’ll save the architecture for another post. The statue is of John Witherspoon, 6th president of Princeton and a signatory of the Declaration of Independence.

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