Making is our founding principle.

For more than 100 years, visitors have been “making” at the Newark Museum. The Museum’s founder, John Cotton Dana, believed “The worth of a museum is in its use.”  The Newark Museum continues its legacy of joining art, technology, science and industry with hands-on, interactive experiences in its newly expanded MakerSPACE.   

What is the MakerSPACE at Newark Museum?

The name says it all.  The MakerSPACE at the Newark Museum is an interactive area where visitors of all ages play, tinker and create as they make connections between the materials, processes and concepts of artwork and natural science objects in the Museum’s collections and their own creativity. 

Use our galleries for inspiration! 

The MakerSPACE is a flexible space that allows audiences to go back and forth between making and visiting the galleries.   

Try this!

• Investigate artworks in the galleries, then visit the MakerSPACE to try out an idea from an artwork on display. 
• Learn how a work of art in the galleries was traditionally made, then challenge yourself to find new ways to transform the materials or ideas in an artwork.    
• Begin by experimenting with materials and processes in the MakerSPACE, then visit the galleries to see what the artists on display have made using similar methods.
• Get more involved by participating in intensive workshops and courses for visitors of all ages. 

Visitors transform materials into unique creations by utilizing an array of equipment, ranging from traditional to the cutting edge, including a laser cutter/engraver, 3D printers, a vinyl cutter, pottery wheels, sewing machines, relief and silk screen printing equipment, as well as varied hand tools like saws, hammers, and screwdrivers.  Hundreds of tools coupled with hundreds of thousands of art and science objects make the MakerSPACE at the Newark Museum a truly unique place for creativity and innovation.