New Jersey State Museum facts for kids
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| Established | 1895 |
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| Location | Trenton, New Jersey |
| Type | State museum of New Jersey |
| Collection size | 2+ million objects |
The New Jersey State Museum is a cool place to visit in Trenton, New Jersey. It's a museum that collects and shares amazing things about natural history, old artifacts, and different cultures. You can also see beautiful art here!
The museum offers lots of fun things to do, like special exhibits, educational activities, and even talks. It also has a planetarium where you can explore space and an auditorium for shows. The museum is part of the New Jersey Department of State.
The New Jersey State Museum is a really good museum! It first got a special approval, called accreditation, in 1974 from the American Alliance of Museums. This means it meets high standards. It has kept this approval ever since, with the latest check-up in 2019. It's one of only nine museums in New Jersey to have this important accreditation.
Contents
A Look Back: The Museum's History
The New Jersey State Museum was the very first state museum in the United States created specifically to teach people. It's also one of the oldest state museums around! The state government officially started the museum in 1895. It was first located in the New Jersey State House.
Early Collections: Natural History and Beyond
When it first opened, the museum focused on natural history. This means it collected things like rocks, minerals, and fossils. These first big collections came from the New Jersey Geological Survey, which started way back in 1836.
In 1912, the museum started collecting archaeology items. These were artifacts made by Native Americans who lived in the region long ago. Some items were from prehistoric times, and others were from when New Jersey was a colony or after it became a state.
In 1922, the museum did something special. It was one of the first museums on the East Coast to show Native American objects as art. This was a big step and helped the museum start its ethnographic collections, which are about different cultures.
Adding Art and Moving to a New Home
In 1924, the museum added decorative arts to its collections. These included beautiful items from the ceramics industry in the Trenton area.
By 1929, the museum needed more space. It moved into a bigger area in the newly built State House Annex. While the museum had shown fine art before, it really started focusing on collecting paintings, sculpture, and other art on paper in the early 1960s.
In 1964, the museum moved again! This time, it went into buildings made just for it, as part of the Capitol Cultural Complex. The main museum building has four floors for exhibits, programs, and research. It also has the planetarium and a gift shop. Another nearby building holds an auditorium and more art galleries.
What You Can Explore: Museum Collections
The New Jersey State Museum has several different departments, called bureaus, that manage its huge collections. Each bureau focuses on a different type of history or art.
Archaeology and Ethnography: Discovering Ancient Cultures
The Bureau of Archaeology/Ethnography has about 2.4 million prehistoric and historic items. These were found during excavations over 100 years! It also has nearly 4,000 ethnographic objects, which are items that represent different cultures.
The ethnographic collection includes items from the Lenape people and other Native American groups from North America.
Cultural History: New Jersey's Story
The Bureau of Cultural History has over 13,000 artifacts. These items tell the story of New Jersey's culture, economy, military, politics, and social history. It also includes examples of decorative arts.
This bureau also takes care of and explains the collection of military flags. These flags were used by New Jersey groups during the Civil War and World War I. They are kept at the New Jersey State Capitol.
Fine Art: A Gallery of American Masterpieces
The State Museum has collected more than 12,000 works of art. This includes paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and photographs.
The art collection mainly focuses on American art. It highlights the work of artists from New Jersey within the bigger picture of American art history. You can also see artworks that show scenes and events from New Jersey.
The collection is especially strong in works by American modern artists, abstract artists from the 1930s and 1940s, and a large collection of art by African-American artists from the 19th to 21st centuries. It also has all the prints by famous artists Ben Shahn and Jacob Landau. This bureau also looks after the portraits of New Jersey's governors and other state officials that are displayed in the State House.
Natural History: Exploring Earth's Past
The Bureau of Natural History has about 250,000 specimens. These include industrial minerals, ores, and amazing paleontological specimens (which are fossils!). You can also see osteological specimens (bones), modern shells, and animal study skins.
Other collections include pinned insects, animals preserved in fluid, taxidermy mounts, and old glass lantern slides. The bureau also keeps about 300 important type specimens of Paleozoic and Mesozoic fossils. These fossils help scientists understand the ancient rock layers in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.
You can also see minerals from the zinc-mining area of Franklin-Sterling Hill. This spot has the largest number of fluorescent mineral species in the world! The museum also has specimens from New Jersey's history of iron mining. Items from outside New Jersey are used to compare with local finds and for educational programs.
Education and Public Programs: Learn and Explore!=
The museum's Bureau of Education offers many programs and events for visitors. School groups can attend classes, workshops, tours of the exhibits, and planetarium programs. They can also find helpful resources like curriculum guides for their classrooms.
The State Museum's planetarium has been a big part of the museum's public programs since it opened in 1964. The planetarium uses "Full Dome" video technology, which makes you feel like you're really in space! Exhibits show constellations, models of the Solar System, and experiences about space exploration. You can watch public shows at the planetarium on weekends, during school breaks (like spring and winter), and in the summer.
See also
- New Jersey State Library
