CreARTivity
Magazine
Cape May County: Art Institutions by Municipality
The Jersey Cape is a summer place, but its art lasts all year, from Cape May's Victorian house museums and Equity theatres to Ocean City's arts center. A town-by-town guide.
In this article
The Jersey Cape is a summer place, but its art lasts all year. Cape May, the nation’s oldest seaside resort, holds Victorian house museums and two professional Equity theatres; Ocean City has its own arts centre and Pops orchestra; and the barrier-island galleries and a small-town heritage museum round out a scene shaped by sea light and salt air. What follows is a guide to those spaces, gathered town by town.
A quick note: opening hours, locations, websites and programming can change over time. Please confirm the details with each venue before you plan your visit.
Cape May
3 institutionsMuseum · Culture
Cape May MAC (Museums+Arts+Culture)
Founded in 1970 to save the 1879 Emlen Physick Estate, MAC runs the mansion as Cape May’s only Victorian house museum, plus revolving exhibits, the Cape May Music Festival, and tours across the historic town.
Theater
Cape May Stage
A professional Equity theatre in the historic 1853 Robert Shackleton Playhouse on the corner of Bank and Lafayette, producing contemporary and classic work in an intimate setting since the late 1980s.
Theater
East Lynne Theater Company
A professional Equity company founded in 1980, dedicated to American classics and works drawn from the country’s literary and theatrical past, staged in historic Cape May.
Ocean City
2 institutionsArts Center
Ocean City Arts Center
A nonprofit community arts centre offering gallery exhibitions, classes and events for all ages, a fixture of the Ocean City cultural scene.
Music Venue
Ocean City Music Pier
A historic Boardwalk concert hall over the ocean, home to the Ocean City Pops, the only resort orchestra of its kind, with a summer series that ranges from Bach to Broadway.
Stone Harbor
1 institutionGallery
Ocean Galleries
A long-established fine-art gallery on the island, showing paintings, sculpture and handcrafted work and hosting appearances by nationally known artists through the season, with a companion location in Avalon.
Woodbine
1 institutionMuseum
Sam Azeez Museum of Woodbine Heritage
A heritage museum, now part of Stockton University, in a former synagogue telling the story of Woodbine’s founding as a Jewish agricultural colony, with exhibits, artifacts and cultural programs.
From a candlelit Victorian mansion to a gallery a block from the surf, Cape May County makes the most of its famous light. Next in the series we head inland and keep the map growing, one town at a time.
Author
About the author
CreARTivity Educational Team
The Educational Team writes CreARTivity's reference work: histories of artistic disciplines, guides to cultural traditions, and the county-by-county surveys of arts institutions across New Jersey. Its brief is to be useful to someone meeting a subject for the first time and still worth reading to someone who already knows it. Edited by Marie Juliane David.
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