art.wikisort.org - Museum

The Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley is an art museum located in Allentown, Pennsylvania.[2] It was founded in 1934 by a group organized by noted Pennsylvania impressionist painter, Walter Emerson Baum. With its collection of over 19,000 works of art, the Allentown Art Museum is a major regional art institution. In addition, its library and archives of more than 16,000 titles and 40 current periodicals make it an important regional cultural resource.

Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley

Allentown Art Museum, July 2008
Established	1934
Location	31 N. 5th Street Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Director	Max Weintraub[1]
Public transit access	LANTA bus: 102, 107, 209, 210, 220, 324
Website	www.allentownartmuseum.org

Founding

The Allentown Art Museum, founded originally as the Allentown Art Gallery and organized by Baum, opened in Allentown's Hunsicker School on March 17, 1934. With seventy canvases by local Pennsylvania impressionist artists on display, the gallery attracted major attention from the local and regional art communities. During the Great Depression, Baum was able to grow the collection through the Public Works of Art Project and through acquisitions and gifts. In June 1936, the City of Allentown granted the museum a permanent home in a federal-style house located in the Rose Garden in Allentown's Cedar Park. The museum's first curator was local artist John E. Berninger, who lived with his wife on the museum's second floor.

Kress endowment

In 1959, a gift of fifty-three Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures from Samuel H. Kress (a native of nearby Cherryville, Pennsylvania) brought the museum to a new level. The Kress gift stimulated community visionaries and museum friends to purchase and refurbish a building, formerly the First Presbyterian Church (originally built 1902), suitable to house the new collection.

In 1960, the Kress gift was featured in the museum's first major catalog, "The Samuel H. Kress Memorial Collection", written by Richard Hirsch, the institution's first director. In his introduction, Hirsch's observed how the "fleeting imagery of TV" changed perceptions of the works in the collection. When created, they were not merely one of many representations of religious figures, but the figures themselves.[3] Hirsch's observations portend the Slow Movement arising more than 25 years later encouraging a renewed, attentive appreciation of the world, including fine art. The museum began featuring "Slow Art" days in 2011 to acknowledge the benefits of quiet, intense reflection.

In 1975, an Edgar Tafel-designed expansion to the building was completed to enhance the museum's programs and collecting plans. At that time, the Museum installed a room designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as part of its permanent collection: the library from the second Francis W. Little House. Another room from that house can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

2010–2011 expansion

In 2010, the museum began a $15.4 million expansion project, designed by architecture firm Venturi Scott Brown of Philadelphia, to renovate the museum, add 7,900 square feet (730 m²) of new classroom and gallery space, corner cafe, expanded gift shop, and add a new all-glass facade to the Fifth Street side of the facility. The expansion, which is the museum's first since 1975, was initially proposed in 1999 and is a significant reduction from the $32 million, 45,000-square-foot (4,200 m²) addition originally planned.[4] Approximately 40% of the new space is gallery space.[5]

Current collection

The Allentown Art Museum's collection, still largely defined by European paintings in 1975, expanded with a large collection of textiles and another gift of works on paper. In 1978, the museum acquired Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Ann Penn Allen, granddaughter of William Allen, the founder of Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 2016, the museum acquired "Lehighton", a mural by Franz Kline, which the artist created for the American Legion in Lehighton, Pennsylvania.[6] Following intensive work on the mural by Luca Bonetti Painting Restoration, the restored painting was unveiled to the public in January 2017.[7]

Portrait of a Young Lady by Rembrandt

On February 10, 2020, Portrait of a Young Lady (1632) by Rembrandt from the museum's collection was announced as authentic following reassessment.[8]

European art

• Game Stall at Market, Studio of Frans Snyders (1625-37)
• Saint Jerome Penitent, Lorenzo Lotto (1515)
• Portrait of Henrica Ploost van Amstel, Paulus Moreelse (1625)
• Central Panel of an Altarpiece Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, Giovanni del Biondo (1379)
• Portrait of a Young Woman, Rembrandt (1632)[9]

American art

• Ann Penn Allen, Gilbert Stuart (1795)
• Niagara Falls, Gustav Johann Grunewald (1834)
• Floriform Vase, Tiffany Studios (1905)

Textiles

• Bed Curtain (Palampore), India, Coromandel Coast (1775)
• Table Cover, Margaret Oothout (1764)

Prints and drawings

• Diogenes after Parmigiano, Ugo da Carpi (after 1525)
• Untitled, Keith Haring (1982)
• Il Perdono (Vision of Saint Francis of Assisi), Federico Barocci (1581)

See also

• List of historic places in Allentown, Pennsylvania

References

External links

• Allentown Art Museum Official Web Site
• Allentown Art Museum on Twitter

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