Allentown Art Museum
Encyclopedia
The Allentown Art Museum is an art museum located in the city of Allentown
Allentown, Pennsylvania
Allentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...

, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It was founded in 1934 by a group organized by noted Pennsylvania impressionist
Pennsylvania Impressionism
Pennsylvania Impressionism refers to an American Impressionist movement from the first half of the 20th century that was centered in and around Bucks County, Pennsylvania, particularly the area around the town of New Hope...

 painter, Walter Emerson Baum
Walter Emerson Baum
Walter Emerson Baum was an American artist and educator active in the Bucks and Lehigh County areas of Pennsylvania in the United States...

. With its collection of over 13,000 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.

Founding of the museum

The "Allentown Art Gallery" was organized by Baum and 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
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, Baum was able to grow the collection through the Public Works of Art Project
Public Works of Art Project
The Public Works of Art Project was a program to employ artists, as part of the New Deal, during the Great Depression. It was the first such program, running from December 1933 to June 1934...

 and through acquisitions and gifts. In June of 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
John E. Berninger
John Emil Berninger was an American landscape painter and Pennsylvania impressionist. He lived and painted in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the United States....

, who lived with his wife on the museum's second floor.

The Kress endowment

In 1959, a gift of fifty-three Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 and Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 paintings and sculptures from Samuel H. Kress
Samuel H. Kress
Samuel Henry Kress was a businessman and philanthropist, founder of the S. H. Kress & Co. five and ten cent store chain. With his fortune, Kress amassed one of the most significant collections of Italian Renaissance and European artwork assembled in the 20th century...

 (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 1975, an Edgar Tafel
Edgar Tafel
Edgar A. Tafel was an American architect, best known as a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright.-Early life and career:Tafel was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants, and moved to New Jersey with his...

-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
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...

 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
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

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 7900 square feet (733.9 m²) of new classroom and gallery space, corner cafe, expanded gift shop, and add an 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, 45000 square feet (4,180.6 m²) addition originally planned. Approximately 40% of the new space will be gallery space. During construction, which is scheduled to begin November 15, 2010 and run until September, 2011, the museum will be closed to the public.

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. The 1978 acquisition of Gilbert Stuart's
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...

 beguiling portrait of Ann Penn Allen (granddaughter of William Allen
William Allen (loyalist)
William Allen was a wealthy merchant, Chief Justice of the Province of Pennsylvania, and mayor of Philadelphia. At the time of the American Revolution, Allen was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Philadelphia...

, the founder of the museum's native Allentown), set the benchmark for the qualitative standards of the collection.

European art

  • Game Stall at Market, Studio of Frans Snyders (1625/37)
  • Saint Jerome Penitent, Lorenzo Lotto
    Lorenzo Lotto
    Lorenzo Lotto was a Northern Italian painter draughtsman and illustrator, traditionally placed in the Venetian school. He painted mainly altarpieces, religious subjects and portraits...

     (1515)
  • Portrait of Henrica Ploost van Amstel, Paulus Moreelse
    Paulus Moreelse
    Paulus Moreelse was a Dutch painter, mainly of portraits.-Life:Moreelse was born and died in Utrecht. He was a pupil of the Delft portrait painter Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, who had himself been a pupil of Anthonie van Blocklandt. He took a study-trip to Italy, where he received many portrait...

     (1625)
  • Central Panel of an Altarpiece Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, Giovanni del Biondo
    Giovanni del Biondo
    Giovanni del Biondo was a 14th century Italian painter of the Gothic and early-Renaissance period, active 1356-1399.From tax records it is known that Giovanni del Biondo lived and flourished in Florence until his death. He specialized in religious-themed works, many of which have survived...

     (1379)

American art

  • Ann Penn Allen, Gilbert Stuart
    Gilbert Stuart
    Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...

     (1795)
  • Niagara Falls, Gustav Johann Grunewald (1834)
  • Floriform Vase, Tiffany
    Louis Comfort Tiffany
    Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau  and Aesthetic movements...

     Studios (1905)

Textiles

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

Prints and drawings

  • Diogenes after Parmigiano, Ugo da Carpi
    Ugo da Carpi
    Ugo da Carpi , painter and printmaker, the first Italian practitioner of the art of the chiaroscuro woodcut, a technique involving the use of several wood blocks to make one print, each block cut to produce a different tone of the same colour...

     (after 1525)
  • Untitled, Keith Haring
    Keith Haring
    Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...

     (1982)
  • Il Perdono (Vision of Saint Francis of Assisi), Frederico Barocci (1581)

External links

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