Newark Museum of Art

The Newark Museum was founded in 1909 by John Cotton Dana, a visionary librarian who believed that art and knowledge belonged to everyone, not only to the elite. He filled the new museum with a deliberately wide range of objects, from fine art to industrial design to natural science, and he championed the idea that a museum should serve and educate its city, welcoming working people, immigrants, and children.

That founding spirit shaped the museum's unusually broad character, and it grew steadily over the decades, acquiring collections, adding buildings, and expanding its programs. Today it encompasses a whole campus in downtown Newark, still guided by Dana's belief that a great museum should be open, useful, and rooted in the life of its community.

The museum's crown jewel is its Tibetan collection, gathered largely in the early twentieth century and counted among the finest and most complete anywhere outside Asia. It holds paintings, sculpture, ritual objects, textiles, and everyday items that together offer a rich portrait of Tibetan Buddhist culture, assembled with unusual depth and care for its era.

At the center of the galleries stands a Buddhist altar, built and consecrated in the traditional manner and blessed by the Dalai Lama during a visit, a rare and living presence within an American museum. Visitors can stand before this working altar and take in the art of a distant and sacred tradition, an experience that sets the Newark Museum apart from nearly any other in the country.

Beyond the Tibetan galleries, the museum holds strong collections of American painting and decorative arts, African art, classical antiquities, and art from across the globe, giving visitors a wide-ranging survey under a single roof. Its holdings reflect Dana's original vision of a museum that gathers the art and craft of many cultures for the benefit of all.

The campus is more than galleries. It includes a planetarium and science exhibits, a nod to the museum's founding breadth, along with the restored Ballantine House, a grand Victorian mansion that preserves the domestic life of an earlier Newark, and a quiet garden. Together they make the museum a place of remarkable variety, where fine art, science, and history sit side by side.

As an indoor museum, the Newark Museum of Art welcomes visitors in every season, but the calendar shapes the surrounding city. Spring brings the trees of nearby Washington Park into leaf and pleasant days for a downtown visit.

Summer is quieter, a cool refuge from the heat, with the museum's programs and exhibitions carrying on. Fall offers crisp air and turning leaves in the city's parks, a fine time to combine the museum with Newark's performing-arts offerings. Winter, especially around the holidays, makes the warm galleries and the planetarium a welcome escape, and the museum's calendar stays lively through the cold months.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.