Newark Museum

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The Newark Museum is the largest museum in New Jersey. Despite its extensive and high-quality collection of art and archeological antiquities, it is often overshadowed by more famous museums in nearby New York City.

The Newark Museum has exhibits on science, natural history, art, and archeology. Its extensive collections of American art include works by Hiram Powers, Thomas Cole, John Singer Sargent, Frederick Church, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Joseph Stella and Frank Stella.

The museum was organized in 1909 by master Newark librarian John Cotton Dana. The kernel of the museum was a collection of Japanese prints, silks, and porcelains assembled by a Newark pharmacist.

Originally located on the fourth floor of the Newark Public Library, the museum moved into its own purpose-built structure in the 1920s after a gift by Louis Bamberger. Since then, the museum has expanded several times, to the south into the former YMCA, to the north into the 1885 Ballantine House, and to the west into a brand-new Michael Graves addition.

Much of the Newark Museum is dedicated to science. It includes a mini-zoo with over 100 live animals, the Dreyfuss Planetarium and the Victoria Hall of Science which highlights some of the museum's 70,000 specimen Natural Science Collection.

The Newark Museum's Tibetan galleries are considered among the best in world. The collection was purchased from Christian missionaries in the early twentieth century. The Tibetan galleries have an in situ Buddhist altar that the Dalai Lama has consecrated.

[edit] Light Rail Service

The Newark Light Rail line opened on July 17, 2006. The southbound line of this extension includes a station on Broad Street that will potentially bring patrons to the museum from all the rail lines now serving Newark Broad Street Station and Newark Penn Station.