Museums, Archives, Historical Sites

Wikipedia provides a list of all museums in the state. Here is an overview of some key ones, and other educational centers.

The New Jersey State Museum is based in Trenton.

The New Jersey Historical Society in Newark maintains some rotating exhibits, plus a library with extensive archives of letters, personal and legal papers, photographs, war propaganda, maps and journals. Library admission is free for members or $5 for the public. Call ahead to schedule a visit if you'd like an archivist to help you find materials.

The Immigration Museum at Ellis Island offers free guided tours, and has extensive genealogical records, which museum curators can help you look through to research family histories.

The Jersey City Museum "features American art and material culture from the region that dates from the colonial period through the present. Works in nearly all media are found in the collection including painting, sculpture, decorative arts, photography, works on paper, furniture, metals, textiles, maps, industrial objects and ephemera."

The Paul Robeson Center @ Rutgers Newark is a great place to both see exhibits by contemporary artists, and to learn about art history and the missions like cultural democracy that arists like Robeson sought to advance in their work. In addition to art galleries, the Paul Robeson Center also publishes books on subjects from archetecture and Newark history to transnational themes like migration and post-war Cambodia.

The American Hungarian Foundation in New Brunswick has its own museum, displaying the art of Hungarian immigrants, and a library with volumes of Hungarian literature dating back to the 1400s. The Foundation was created in 1989. New Brunswick had been a center of the Hungarian-American community since the 1930s, with many more immigrants arriving after the Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The Foundation also hosts a street festival every summer.

Cornelius Low House is a free local museum in Pistcataway, New Jersey with rotating exhibits.

Rutgers University Geology Museum is free and open to the public. It aims to educate people about the geological and natural history of the area, and features many fossils - including the footprints of dionsaurs and the skeleton of a mastodon that once lived in New Jersey. There are other specimins of prehistoric life from around the world.

The Wetlands Institute is an educational center focused on the ecology of New Jersey's shores and marshes. They have summer programs for children, and work for the conservation of terrapin turtles, horseshoe crabs and threatened shorebirds.

The Museum of Early Trades and Crafts exhibits tools of the trade of artisans, homesteaders, and pre-industrial people in the area, as well as artifacts of every-day life like antique toys, tavern materials, books and folk instruments.

The Pietro and Maria Botto House just outside Paterson is named after the couple who lived there in the 1910s, working in the silk mills and running an inn out of their home's lower level. During the 1913 Silk Strike, barred from most public meeting places, the thousands of silk workers shutting down the city gathered daily outside the Botto house. Speakers addressed the crowds from the balconies. The IWW leadership helped organize support for the strikers, joining an already-vibrant tradition of Italian radicalism in the city. Today, the Botto House is a labor museum and archives many photos and materials from early 20th century Paterson.

Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives are found on the lower levels of the university's Alexander Library. They are open to the public - though patrons must sign in when visiting. Some books and records are found in the stacks in the main room, but many more are on sub-levels and you'll need an archivist to bring them up for you. In my research, the archives have provided me with everything from documents on Eastern European refugees, to underground newspapers from the Vietnam War era, to the records of an early-20th century anarchist school, and rare art by Lynd Ward who created epic graphic novels during the Great Depression.