P. Adams Sitney, emeritus professor of visual arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts, in 1987. Photo by Robert Matthews, Office of Communications

P. Adams Sitney, emeritus professor of visual arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts and one of the world’s leading experts on avant-garde film, died at home in Matunuck, Rhode Island, on June 8. He was 80 years old.

“P. Adams Sitney was inevitably the smartest person in any room he graced,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, founding chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities. “I use the word ‘graced’ advisedly because, in addition to having a great intellect, he was the epitome of graciousness.

“My favorite story about him has to do with two sisters, one a student at Princeton and the other a student at Harvard,” Muldoon said. “The Harvard student couldn’t believe that her sister had such easy access to professors. There was one surefire way of proving it. The pair of them arrived at P. Adams Sitney’s office door at around noon. Three hours later, after regaling them on any number of topics, he announced he had to go pick up his children from school. The sisters burst out laughing and told P. Adams of their ruse. He, too, found it hilarious. That story tells us everything we need to know about this witty, wise, warmhearted man.”

Sitney joined Princeton as a lecturer in 1980, attained the rank of full professor in 1992, and transferred to emeritus status in 2016. He founded Princeton’s film studies committee and oversaw the building of a cinema—now the James M. Stewart ’32 Film Theater—during the renovations of 185 Nassau Street for the Program in Visual Arts.

Read Sitney’s full obituary, written by Liz Fuller-Wright in Princeton University’s Office of Communications.