Official Site of The State of New JerseyThe State Museum, in collaboration with the NJ State Police, has instituted enhanced security measures at the Museum. Personal items and bags are subject to search upon entering the Museum. Security may consist of electronic, physical and/or visual inspection of individuals and/or personal items. We suggest leaving backpacks/large bags in your vehicle. Passage through magnetometers and wanding procedures will be conducted at entry for all visitors. Video surveillance is in use throughout the Museum.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Changes in nature, whether due to naturally occurring events or actions by people, can impact environments and species. Because plants and animals are directly tied to the ecosystems in which they live, they are also affected when their habitats are impacted by change. “Ecosystems at Risk: Threatened and Endangered in New Jersey” presents some of the major ecosystems present in New Jersey and highlights the plants and animals living in them, as well as the threats they currently face. Some of the major causes of ecosystem and species loss today include climate change, invasive species, habitat loss, and pollution.
“Ecosystems at Risk” walks visitors through the major ecosystems in New Jersey - the Skylands, Piedmont, Pinelands, Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and the Atlantic Coast, and highlights the threatened and endangered species in each. From bobcats in the Skylands to Piping Plovers along the Atlantic Coast, “Ecosystems at Risk” looks at species across the state and discusses the threats they face and what you can do to help protect them. Working closely with the Department of Environmental Protection, the exhibit also showcases the research being done on these species at risk and offers hope for the long-term survival of biodiversity in New Jersey.
Robert Smithson (American, 1938-1973)
Untitled (n.d.)
mirrors
3½" x 2⅞" x 2⅞"
Museum Purchase through a Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Switlik
FA2022.4.2
©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York.
Photo credit: Alex Yudzon
Opening June 14, 2025
In 1964, the New Jersey State Museum established a bureau to care for and collect Fine Art objects. Since then, the American-focused collection that we have here at the Museum has grown to over 12,000 artworks including painting, sculpture, and works on paper. Over the last three years, the Fine Art Bureau has made important additions to the collection that open up opportunities to explore new narratives in American art history, and New Jersey’s role in a global contemporary art world. Discover some of the latest accessions to the Fine Art collection, many of which will be on view to the public for the first time, including works by artists Robert Smithson, Cindy Sherman, Willie Cole, Mel Edwards, Nancy Cohen, and Purvis Young.
May 4, 2024 – May 11, 2025
The use of bark is global and ubiquitous from prehistoric times to today. Indigenous communities all over the world harvest bark as a source of food, medicine, everyday objects and works of art. Highlighting objects from the Museum’s Ethnographic collection, explore items from the Pacific Northwest, South America, Pacific Islands and our local Eastern Woodlands area. Learn more about how bark is harvested and crafted and how these ancient traditions continue today.
Activities for all ages are available on select weekends throughout the run of the exhibit.
All text in this exhibit is also available in Spanish.
Closing March 16
Born in Salinas, California, to a Filipino father and Shawnee mother, Robert Duran (1938–2005) arrived in New York in the early 1960s via San Francisco, where he soon became part of the artistic milieu associated with Bykert Gallery. Originally a sculptor, Duran and his approach to painting offer an alternative to both the hard-edge geometric abstraction and minimalism that dominated much of the ‘60s and ‘70s in New York. Duran’s acrylic wash surfaces and “color shapes,” as critic Carter Ratcliff called them, at times resemble petroglyphs, and at others take on cartographic or even geological qualities.
Despite a critically successful career in the New York art world, Duran moved around 1980 with his family to Hillsdale, New Jersey, where he privately continued to develop his painting style. Through the works in this exhibition, visitors will be able to trace the arc of Duran’s evolutions and experiments in painting, drawing, and watercolor from roughly 1967 to the late 1990s. Much of what we know about Duran is limited to exhibition history and anecdotes from friends, family, and acquaintances who can only begin to flesh out certain contours of the artist’s life, often leaving more questions than answers. This exhibition seeks to reintroduce this artist to the public primarily through the most significant record of his life available to us: his paintings and works on paper.
February 3, 2024 - September 15, 2024
Experience New Jersey history through a recently discovered archive of photographic negatives that once belonged to a prolific, but long-forgotten, local photographer.
“Discovering Grant Castner” celebrates one New Jerseyan’s passion for photography - from the 1890s through the 1910s, and is curated from the State Museum’s extensive collection of the photographer’s original negatives.
In 2019, the New Jersey State Museum received a donation of more than 1,200 glass plate negatives. The plates preserve pinpoint moments of everyday life in New Jersey at the turn of the 20th century, snapshots of our collective past. They belonged to Grant Castner (1863-1941), an amateur photographer born in Belvidere (Warren County) who later lived and worked here in Trenton.
The 200 images featured in the exhibition reflect Caster’s artistic talent and illustrate numerous aspects of New Jersey history, from close-up portraits of family and friends to the marvels of turn-of-the-century transportation, to the flurry of excitement and activity at the famed Inter-state fair in Hamilton Township.
Further subjects include:
Visit this exhibition to discover more about the life and works of Grant Castner and experience the full breadth of his talent as it transports you back in time to the New Jersey of our ancestors.
Caroline Burton: Way Finding
State I (of Being, NJSM), 2022
acrylic on canvas
72.5 x 61 in.
Courtesy of the artist
September 23, 2023 – March 31, 2024
Since 1984, the New Jersey Artist Series at the New Jersey State Museum has highlighted artists living and working in the state, and established the Museum’s crucial involvement with the world of contemporary art in New Jersey and beyond. We are pleased to announce that Caroline Burton will be the next artist featured in the exhibition series.
Caroline Burton is a process-driven artist, who draws on architectural forms, nature, and elements of chance for inspiration. Burton moves fluidly between painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, often combining techniques in a practice that invites unconventional materials. This New Jersey Artist series exhibition will feature some of the artist’s most recent work, from 2020 to the present, including a series based on the Brutalist architecture of the State Museum building.
“History Beneath Our Feet: Archaeology of a Capital City,” focusing on the long history of human activity in Trenton, New Jersey as told through the lens of archaeology. The exhibition will be on view in the Museum’s main floor gallery. Visitors will discover the importance of archaeology to preserving the past and how excavations at ten locations within Trenton have helped inform our knowledge of human occupation and activities in the area, going back to prehistoric times. Stories that have been lost to time reemerge through artifacts on view, including pottery sherds that illuminated the existence of a long-forgotten local potter; thousands of artifacts that marked a previously unknown Indigenous people’s site; beads that may have belonged to enslaved people; a hollowed-out wooden log that served as Trenton’s water system in the 19th century, and more. Among the archaeological sites explored are the New Jersey State House, Petty’s Run, the Trent House and the Old Barracks Museum.
Joe Overstreet
FIRE AND ICE (1991)
oil and collage on canvas
Gift of the artist
On view through August 27, 2023
“Beyond the Tangible: Non-objective Abstraction from the Collection” is a new exhibition of 26 non-objective abstract works by 22 artists from the Fine Art collection. The exhibition can be seen in the Museum’s 2nd floor gallery and features works created by American artists since the late 1930s. “Beyond the Tangible” is on view through August 27, 2023.
New Jersey is home to a diverse and robust artistic community; the New Jersey Arts Annual exhibition highlights the work of visual artists and craftspeople from around the state. This year’s exhibition theme is “Reemergence.” Artists, like most New Jerseyans, are taking steps to reemerge into an altered landscape. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, political and ideological polarization, and a collective reckoning with systemic racism remain critical to achieving the country’s promise. One hundred twenty-seven works by 95 artists were selected for inclusion in the exhibition. The complete list of artists. The New Jersey Arts Annual: Reemergence is a project of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the New Jersey State Museum. At the New Jersey State Museum, the exhibition is also supported by the New Jersey State Museum Foundation.
NJ Arts Annual Artist Talks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNFj4CbXUFux_WZQUEi6JSA
Sharks and their relatives share a 400-million-year history and have a diverse family tree. They inhabit the world’s oceans, rivers and estuaries evoking fear and mystery. But much this fear comes from a lack of understanding about sharks and their habitats. This exhibition dispels some of the myths and misunderstandings about sharks and their relatives by exploring their biology, fossil record, conservation and cultural significance. Specimens and artifacts from the New Jersey State Museum collections will be on display to demonstrate the truly jaw-dropping world of sharks!
Ken Ramsay 1935-2008
Susan Taylor, as Model c.1970s
gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Susan Taylor
January 29, 2022 – May 22, 2022
The exhibition explores the contested ways in which African and African American beauty have been represented in historical and contemporary contexts. Throughout the Western history of art and image-making, the relationship between beauty and art has become increasingly complex within contemporary art and popular culture. This touring exhibition was organized by the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and curated by Deborah Willis, PhD, University Professor and Chair of the Department. At the New Jersey State Museum, the exhibition has been made possible by the Lucille M. Paris Fund of the New Jersey State Museum Foundation.
IMAGE CREDIT: JAR, (Before 1941) Pueblo
Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
clay, polychrome
Gift of Dr. Lancelot Ely
AE7122A
The New Jersey State Museum is one of the oldest state museums in the nation, and was the first of its kind to be established with education at the heart of its mission. In the beginning, the Museum’s focus was on natural history, but today, the Museum includes important collections in Natural History, as well as Archaeology & Ethnography, Cultural History and Fine Art. This exhibition offers visitors a glimpse into the diversity of the collections which number well over 2,000,000 specimens, artifacts and objects.
Today, the Museum’s remains committed to education through the research and preservation of its collections. The Museum continues to expand and now includes well over 2 million specimens, artifacts and objects. These treasures are held in trust for the people of New Jersey to learn about our history, celebrate our place in the world and inform our future.
Jan. 4, 2020 – Mar. 6, 2022
They occupy our forests, fields, parks, beaches, farms, backyards and even our homes. Indeed, birds are everywhere. But many New Jerseyans remain largely unaware of the profound natural and cultural significance of these ubiquitous avian creatures.
This exhibition will bring together a wide assortment of artifacts and specimens to explore two concepts about our fine feathered friends – their status as an important ecological mainstay and their historical role as a design-inspiring force – or muse – for New Jersey artisans in the decorative arts.
A Virtual version of the exhibition can be view here: www.flickr.com/photos/njstatemuseum/collections/72157714167946541/
Find your feathered friends with this mini bird guide!
Page Last Updated: 04/07/26
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