Princeton University Art Museum is devoting a major exhibition to Willem de Kooning’s formative late-1940s work, tracing the artist’s rapid development between 1945 and 1950. 'Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50' is on view at the museum in Princeton, New Jersey, from March 15 to July 26, 2026, and is billed as the first exhibition to focus on the intensely generative period surrounding de Kooning’s full-scale debut in the New York art world.
The show centers on the years when de Kooning cemented his position as a leader of the American avant-garde. According to the museum, the exhibition is anchored by works from his first solo exhibition, held in 1948, including 'Black Friday', a highlight in Princeton’s collections. That work is identified on the museum’s site as 'Black Friday', 1948, an enamel and oil over paper collage on fiberboard in a painted wood frame, and is listed as a Princeton University Art Museum object with a gift credit from H. Gates Lloyd, Class of 1923, and Mrs. Lloyd in honor of the Class of 1923.
The exhibition draws additional paintings from more than a dozen museums and private collections, allowing visitors to follow de Kooning’s experimentation during the years after his New York breakthrough. The museum says he refined the exchange in his work between figuration and abstraction during this period, producing compositions that became among his most celebrated. It describes the exhibition as a rare opportunity to study a defining moment in the career of an artist who fundamentally redefined painting in the twentieth century and became one of modernism’s foundational representatives.
The curatorial team brings together specialists from Princeton and beyond. The exhibition is curated by John Elderfield, Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Distinguished Curator and Lecturer, Princeton University Art Museum; Mitra Abbaspour, Houghton Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art and Head of the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at Harvard Art Museums; and Lee Colón, curatorial research associate at Princeton University Art Museum. The museum also notes support for the exhibition from the Allen R. Adler, Class of 1967, Curatorial Leadership Fund, the Fanzhi Foundation for Art and Education, the Frances E. and Elias Wolf, Class of 1920, Fund, Gagosian, Shelly and Tony Malkin, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and Tom and Mila Tuttle, among others.
The exhibition’s run sits within a broader summer schedule at Princeton University Art Museum that also includes related public programming. The museum lists special exhibitions tours for 'Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50' on July 23 from 6 to 7 p.m. and on July 26 from 3 to 4 p.m. A July 23 outdoor film screening of 'In the Heights' is also noted on the exhibition page as a related event. The museum’s newsletter on July 22 described the show as a “last chance” exhibition, with closing set for July 26.
'Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50' is presented at Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey, March 15 to July 26, 2026.
