CreARTivity
Magazine
Salem County: Art Institutions by Municipality
American glassmaking began in Salem County in 1739, and the craft never left. A town-by-town guide to the art institutions of Salem County.
In this article
American glassmaking begins in Salem County. Caspar Wistar lit the furnaces of the Wistarburgh Glass Works at Alloway in 1739, the first commercially successful glass factory in the country, and the craft never left: Salem Community College now teaches it from a purpose-built glass facility at Carneys Point, and traces its own lineage back to 1961, when a young Paul J. Stankard enrolled in its scientific glassblowing programme. The county’s other institutions sit in the rooms history gave them. A 1721 mansion on Market Street in Salem. A 1734 brick house at Hancocks Bridge, its Flemish bond laid with blue-glazed headers. An 1885 opera house in Woodstown. A coastal battery on the Delaware, built to guard Philadelphia. And a 176-acre farm at Elmer that has taught the arts since 1960. 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, and Salem County is more seasonal than most of New Jersey, with several of the institutions below opening one day a week or only in summer. Please confirm the details with each venue before you plan your visit.
Carneys Point
2 institutionsGlass Center · Art School
Samuel and Jean Jones Glass Education Center
Salem Community College’s 20,000-square-foot teaching facility for its Glass Art degree and its Scientific Glass Technology programme, which the college describes as the only associate degree of its kind in the nation. It holds a student gallery, runs public workshops in flameworking, glassblowing and kiln forming, and hosts the International Flameworking Conference each spring.
Glass Collection · Library
Contemporary Glass Resource Center
Established in 2013 inside the Michael S. Cettei Memorial Library, seeded by the glass artist Paul J. Stankard with more than five hundred books and thirty retrospective examples of his own work, alongside pieces by other makers and a video archive of artist demonstrations.
Elmer
2 institutionsArts Center
Appel Farm Arts & Music Center
Founded in 1960, when the musicians and educators Albert and Clare Appel turned their 176-acre farm into an arts community. It now runs an overnight summer arts camp, year-round classes in ceramics, mosaics and music, festivals, artist retreats and school residencies, reaching roughly thirty-two thousand people a year.
Historical Society
The Greater Elmer Area Historical Society
Collects and interprets the history of Elmer Borough and of Pittsgrove and Upper Pittsgrove Townships from a building on Elmer’s small Broad Street downtown, opening its doors on the second Saturday of each month.
Lower Alloways Creek · Hancocks Bridge
1 institutionHistoric House
Hancock House State Historic Site
Built in 1734 for Judge William and Sarah Hancock, and the finest surviving example of Delaware Valley patterned brickwork, its facade laid in Flemish bond with blue-glazed headers. It was the site of the Hancock’s Bridge massacre of March 1778, when British troops attacked American militiamen quartered in the house. Admission is free and tours are guided.
Penns Grove
1 institutionLocal History Museum
Historical Society of Penns Grove, Carneys Point and Oldmans
Founded in 1999 and widened from Penns Grove to take in Carneys Point and Oldmans, the society holds a large photograph collection, oral histories and the records of local churches and businesses, shown through galleries on transportation, Pedricktown and the county before independence.
Pennsville
3 institutionsHistoric Site · Museum
Fort Mott State Park
A 124-acre coastal fortification built between 1896 and 1900 to defend the Delaware River, garrisoned until 1922 and again during the Second World War. Its gun batteries, fire-control tower and observation stand survive, a museum and visitor centre interpret the site, and a seasonal ferry runs to Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island.
Historical Museum
Pennsville Township Historical Society
A nine-building complex gathered around the riverfront Victorian farmhouse that Daniel Garrison built about 1880, restored in 1991 and opened to the public in 1992. The society runs local heritage tours alongside its collections, and opens on Sunday afternoons from April to December.
Art Studio · Classes
Home Coming Art Studio
A working and teaching studio run by the artist Annette Devitt, offering public classes and multi-week workshops in watercolour and in fibre arts and weaving, including hands-on sessions at the loom, with finished hand-woven and painted work on view.
Salem
3 institutionsMuseum · Historical Society
Salem County Historical Society
Founded in 1884 and built around the Alexander Grant House of 1721, with a collection of more than ten thousand objects spanning material culture, textiles, fine art and Native artifacts, and the Josephine Jaquett Memorial Research Library for genealogy. A stone barn, a log cabin and the John Jones Law Office stand in the courtyard.
Gallery · Frame Shop
Salem Art Bank
Opened in 2017 inside a Georgian-style former bank of 1926 in Salem’s Broadway historic district, run by framers who trained in New York’s East Village. It mounts rotating exhibitions alongside archival framing, giclee printing and photograph restoration.
Arts Education Center
Salem Building Arts Center
Run by Allied Resources for Kids, the centre pairs fine-art classes with instruction in the building and making trades, from carpentry to laser engraving and plaster casting, alongside a summer academy and school field trips.
Woodstown
2 institutionsTheater
The Blue Moon Theatre
A nonprofit community theatre in the Woodstown Opera House, which opened on Christmas Eve 1885 and later housed vaudeville and the first moving pictures to reach the town. Its seasons mix musicals and plays with live bands and comedy nights, and the company is raising funds toward restoring the building.
Historical Museum
Pilesgrove-Woodstown Historical Society
A museum and genealogical library in the Samuel Dickerson House, with period rooms, artifacts and manuscripts, and an 1840s one-room schoolhouse moved from Eldridge’s Hill standing on the grounds. The society runs the Woodstown by Candlelight tour each December.
Salem County has no gallery district, and it has never needed one. Its art travels instead. The Salem County Art Tour, now in its nineteenth year, opens working studios across Alloway, Elmer, Lower Alloways Creek, Monroeville, Pedricktown, Pennsville, Pittsgrove, Salem and Woodstown twice a year, and the Salem County Art League, the Salem County Arts Alliance and Oakwood Summer Theatre all present work without a building of their own. Two more places sit just outside the frame of this guide and are worth the drive anyway: Cowtown Rodeo at Pilesgrove, running weekly since 1929 and the only professional weekly rodeo in the state, and the Woodstown Central Railroad, which carries passengers through the farmland in historic cars. With Salem, the county-by-county survey of New Jersey is complete.
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.
Leave a comment
Your email will not be published. Comments are moderated before they appear.