The collection at the Morris Museum includes paintings, sculptures, photography, works on paper, crafts, and mixed media art.
The fine art collection is particularly focused on 19th- and 20th- century European and American painting and sculpture. Highlights include Frederick MacMonnies bronze sculpture, Pan of Rohallion (1890), an idyllic Pastoral Landscape by Richard Wilson, and works by American landscape painters who worked in New Jersey, including Thomas Moran and Charles Warren Eaton.
The decorative arts collection includes historic and contemporary ceramics, glass, silver, and furniture, both handmade and manufactured in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The Museum’s extensive costume collection contains clothing and accessories for men, women, and children dating from the mid-1700s through modern times, and the textile collection holds both American and international examples.
In 2003, the Museum was awarded the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection, one of the world’s most important collections of mechanical musical instruments and automata (robotic figures of animals and people). This collection further enhances the Morris Museum’s role as a major cultural center and travel destination for the arts, sciences and humanities. This 750-object collection reflects innovative technology, exquisite craftsmanship, compelling sound and important cultural heritage. In recognition of what is the Museum’s most renowned collection, the Museum launched a major capital expansion project that resulted in a 5,000 square foot gallery devoted to showcasing the history of mechanical music and automata, a grand Entrance Pavilion, and a sky-lighted Court and expanded upper galleries.
Today, the Morris Museum is the second largest museum in New Jersey, and it is the only museum in New Jersey with a professional theater that produces and presents professional stage and concert productions.