Culture in Downtown Newark

Rutgers-Newark runs this on the second floor of the old Hahne and Company department store, reached through an atrium that opens onto both Broad and Halsey. Inside are the Paul Robeson Galleries, the SHINE Portrait Studio and a video production studio, and everything is free. The current exhibition cycle is built around Blues People, after the Newark-born LeRoi Jones.

Mon to Sat, 8am to 9pm. Closed Sun. Individual gallery and studio hours vary

New Jersey's largest museum, on Washington Street behind Military Park, with American painting, a Tibetan collection and a period house attached. Admission is ten dollars, eight concessions, and free if you live in Newark or study at a university here. On the third Friday of the month it stays open to nine.

Thu and Fri, noon to 7pm. Sat and Sun, 10am to 5pm. Open to 9pm on the third Friday of each month. Closed Mon to Wed

The main library faces Washington Park from a limestone front laid in 1899 and dedicated in 1901, designed by the Philadelphia firm Rankin and Kellogg and on the National Register since 1978. The ground floor runs rotating exhibits out of the city's own collections, and Philip Roth's personal library is on display. Anyone can walk in and sit down without a card.

Mon, Tue, Thu and Fri, 9am to 5:30pm. Wed, 9am to 8:30pm. Sat, 9am to 1:30pm. Closed Sun