Penn State's art museum holds a respectable collection spanning five thousand years, with particular strengths in American art, European works on paper, and ceramics. The building itself is an attractive postmodern structure with a skylit central atrium. For a university museum in a small town, the collection is genuinely worth your time — the American paintings gallery covers 19th- and 20th-century work with some real highlights, and the Asian art wing includes quality Chinese bronzes and Japanese prints.
The museum is free and open to the public, making it a reliable alternative for a rainy afternoon or when football madness makes the rest of campus hard to navigate. Temporary exhibitions are usually well-curated and often draw on Penn State's academic specialties — archaeological finds from university-sponsored digs abroad have appeared here. The museum sits at the heart of campus near Old Main, making it easy to combine with a broader walk around the university grounds.