‘Night at the Museums’ Event to Be Held at Penn State

The Penn State Museum Consortium will hold the fall 2025 “Night at the Museums” event on Thursday, Sept. 11. Participating museums, galleries and performance spaces on the University Park campus will be open extended hours from 4 to 8 p.m.

Admission to the museums is free and open to the public.

“Night at the Museums” offers a chance for students, staff, faculty and the community to visit a variety of unique museums across campus during special evening hours, said Rita Graef, chair of the consortium.

“Whether strolling the lighted pathways of the Arboretum at Penn State, viewing fascinating fossils in the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum and Art Gallery or standing on the scales in the historic Armsby Respiration Calorimeter Museum Building, there is always something interesting to see and do,” she said.

New this year, the Centre for Preforming Arts will host a “silent disco” and journal-making activity in the lobby of Eisenhower Auditorium. Other opportunities will include learning about the spotted lanternfly at the Frost Entomological Museum, visiting the galleries in the HUB-Robeson Center, discovering new plants at the Pennsylvania Agricultural College Herbarium, looking at pottery at the Matson Museum of Anthropology and posing with the original “Nittany Lion” at the All-Sports Museum.

“Visiting museums at night gives them a whole different feel and encourages visitors to interact,” Graef said. “Night at the Museums accommodates those who may not be able to visit during regular hours, and this is one of the few times a year that the historic Armsby Respiration Calorimeter is open to the public. We encourage people to enjoy an evening exploring sites across University Park Campus. They can navigate a route from collections, to galleries, to museums and the arboretum using Penn State’s map.”

Participating museums include:

• All-Sports Museum
• Armsby Respiration Calorimeter Museum
• Center for the Performing Arts
• Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum and Art Gallery
• Frost Entomological Museum
• HUB Robeson Galleries
• Matson Museum of Anthropology
• Palmer Museum of Art
• PAC Herbarium
• The Arboretum at Penn State