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POP ARTIST DUANE HANSON’S super realistic sculpture of a man on a tractor (left) and Robert Heide at the Newark Museum in Newark, NJ. Photo by Timothy Bissell.

By John Gilman

WestView News writer Robert Heide will be featured on a panel about Pop Art at the Newark Museum in downtown Newark on Saturday, July 13 at 2 PM. The Museum, at 49 Washington Street, is a few short blocks from Newark’s historic Penn Station—best way for Greenwich Villagers to get there is by the PATH train which you can get at 9th Street and 6th Avenue or from Christopher Street between Hudson and Greenwich Streets. After architect Michael Graves’ $22 million renovation in 1990 the Newark Museum became a masterpiece of a museum building and in it I noticed many new Pop Art and Art Deco acquisitions since we first started visiting back when we were working on our guidebook O’ New Jersey – Daytripping, Back Roads, Eateries, Funky Adventures for St. Martins (new third edition available at Amazon). Known for its Tibetan and Native American holdings the beautiful Newark Museum is connected to the whole and actual fully furnished and restored Victorian townhouse of the founder of Ballantine Ale.

Robert, our friend and photographer Timothy Bissell, and I attended the museum in May where Robert had been invited to talk about, among other things, his old friend Andy Warhol, and to conduct a tour of the Pop Art Gallery at the museum. The helpful and knowledgeable program staff integrated the tour with their Thursday Night special ‘event’ which was a party celebrating the ‘crazy’ 1970s and everybody, it seemed, was in costume, dancing to the period hits played by a DJ in the spectacular marble lobby of the institution. We had a lot of fun eating and drinking and afterwards we drove on out to Bloomfield (hometown of the ‘Empress of New Jersey’, Connie Francis) to Holsten’s Ice Cream Parlor (site of the last segment of the Soprano’s) where we indulged in hot fudge sundaes with home-made ice cream and home-made chocolate—and with hand whipped whipped cream on top.

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