Gillett Good Griffi n 1928–2016 168 Photo: John Bigelow Taylor IN tribute Faculty curator of Pre-Columbian and Native American Art, Emeritus, at the Princeton University Art Museum, Gillett Good Griffi n passed away this past June. He was eighty-seven. He had been ill and in pain for a number of years, quieting the jovial spirit that for so long characterized him. Gillett had many friends in the extended Princeton community and in the world of Pre-Columbian art. He will be sorely missed but long remembered. Gillett was born in Brooklyn but raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was educated at Deerfi eld Academy and at Yale University. His fi rst interest was books and graphic arts. Gillett was curator of graphic arts in the Division of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Princeton University Library from 1952 to 1966. His move from the library to the museum stemmed from his decision to leave his collection of Pre-Columbian artifacts with the Princeton University Art Museum before departing for an extended stay in Mexico. In 1967, the then-director of the museum called him in Mexico and asked him to return to Princeton to serve as curator of the museum’s collection of Pre-Columbian art. It was an amusing offer because at the time the collection was basically Gillett’s: The museum had only three presentable objects of its own. Over the next thirty-eight years Gillett carefully built the museum’s collection, sometimes through enticing friends of Princeton to make gifts, but more often through his own purchases, which, in time, became gifts to the collection. The former curator of Pre-Columbian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Julie Jones, says with respect that Gillett made the Princeton University Art Museum’s Pre-Columbian collection the fi nest university collection of its kind in the United States. The collection has extraordinary range and depth, but with particular strengths in the Olmec and Maya cultures. Gillett taught Pre-Columbian art at Princeton University, focusing on honing his students’ eyes. In addition to attending Gillett’s amply illustrated lectures, students also met weekly in small groups in a private room at the campus museum. He had the students handle select objects, wanting them to become intimately familiar with the artifacts. The fi nal installment of these precept meetings was legendary: Students would enter the room to fi nd the conference table fi lled with objects, half of which were authentic and half of which were fake. Students were expected to distinguish which objects were “right” from those that were “wrong” and to be able to explain why. Gillett lived close to campus in an eighteenth-century home chock-full of beautiful objects from cultures throughout the world: ancient Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and Roman, Chinese, Japanese, African, and, above all, Pre-Columbian. Students and visitors to Princeton, as well as his many friends, were always invited to his home and were likely to be served wine from the likes of an ancient Greek vessel or a silver Inca goblet. Once Gillett’s home was burglarized, but the thieves took only a secondhand phonograph. Gillett liked to joke that the thieves probably asked each other, “Why does this guy have all of this old stuff?” (The “old stuff” included a third-century BCE Greek statue on the upstairs toilet.) Gillett was gregarious, gracious, and generous. He liked stories, puns, and jokes. He was interesting and interested. Gillett’s curiosity and enthusiasm for Pre-Columbian art was contagious. He was a “pied piper” for the fi eld. His enthusiasm and good humor were instrumental in encouraging dealers (including myself) and friends of Princeton to assist him in building the university’s Pre- Columbian collection, and he succeeded in his mission. The Pre-Columbian collection at the Princeton University Art Museum is superb. It is, and always will be, a valued and enduring legacy of a great man. Spencer Throckmorton
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