Welcome to the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion
In the heart of Trenton’s historic Cadwalader Park, the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion houses a fine collection of art and artifacts related to Trenton’s historical, industrial, and cultural past and present. In addition to changing and permanent exhibitions, we have hosted a range of community events, performances, and art classes that will resume over time as we continue to phase back in from our Covid-19 closure.
Our first floor galleries host exhibitions of contemporary art in all media, offering diverse and exciting visual experiences throughout the year. Our signature exhibition is the annual juried Ellarslie Open, which highlights the artistic talent that abounds throughout the New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania region and beyond. Though it was canceled due to Covid-19 in 2020, we look forward to its return in 2021. Recent art exhibits include Women Artists, Trenton Style, curated by Mel Leipzig and on view January 29 through June 6, 2021, The Conversation Continues, curated by Madelaine Shellaby, If These Quilts Could Talk, featuring the Sankofa Stitchers and the Friendly Quilters of Bucks County and curated by Diane Ciccone and Jane Malloy, Young Visions, curated by Jennifer Rubin Garey, New Jersey Photography Forum 25-Year Retrospective; Stand Up Men; From Durer to Digital and 3D; Ellarslie Open 36; Marge Chavooshian: A Preview; WRITER Janet Purcell ARTIST; Our Town: Paintings of Mel Leipzig; Ren & Stimpy in “A Day at the Museum”; and the Garden State Watercolor Society Juried Show.
Upper and lower galleries display permanent and changing exhibits of art, decorative arts and historical artifacts, to which many visitors return again and again. The second floor galleries include the current exhibition On the Forefront: Trenton’s Junior No. 1, 1916, curated by Karl J. Flesch, and galleries featuring tableware, sanitary ware, and artware illuminating Trenton’s prolific ceramics industry of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Victorian room presents a parlor as it may have looked when Ellarslie was a private residence in the 1860s. We are able to draw from our extensive collection of fine arts, decorative arts, industrial memorabilia and historical objects to create rotating displays that illuminate aspects of Trenton’s history.
Molly’s Museum Shop, a go-to for shoppers and gift-givers, features an array of fine and decorative arts, unique gifts and accessories, and historic items and Trenton memorabilia.
The museum is located in Ellarslie Mansion, an Italianate villa built in 1848. The mansion is the centerpiece of Cadwalader Park, which was designed by the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose most famous work is New York City’s Central Park.
