Allentown Art Museum

The Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley is an art museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was started in 1934 by a group led by Walter Emerson Baum, a Pennsylvania impressionist painter.

The museum has a large collection of more than 20,000 pieces of art. It is an important place for art in the area. The museum also has a library and archives with many books and magazines.

History

Allentown Art Museum started as the Allentown Art Gallery. It was organized by Walter Emerson Baum. The gallery opened on March 17, 1934, in Allentown's Hunsicker School. It showed 70 paintings by local Pennsylvania impressionist artists.

During the Great Depression, Baum grew the collection using projects and gifts. In 1936, the city gave the museum a home in a Federal-style house in Allentown's Cedar Park.

In 1959, a large gift of Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures helped the museum grow. This led to the purchase of a new building in 1960, a former church built in 1902.

In 1975, the museum expanded with a design by Edgar Tafel. It added a library from a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The collection also grew with European paintings and textile arts.

In 2010, the museum finished a $15.4 million expansion by Venturi Scott Brown. It added new classroom and gallery space, a cafe, and a gift shop. This was the museum’s first expansion since 1975.

Current collection

Lehighton

Main article: Lehighton (Franz Kline)

In 2016, the Allentown Art Museum got a large painting named Lehighton by the artist Franz Kline. He painted it for a building in Lehighton, Pennsylvania. After fixing the painting, people could see it again in January 2017.

Rembrandt's Portrait of a Young Lady

In February 2020, the museum learned that a painting named Portrait of a Young Lady by Rembrandt, made in 1632, was really painted by him after checking it again.

American art

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

European art

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

Prints and drawings

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

Textiles

• Table Cover by Margaret Oothout (1764)
• Bed Curtain (Palampore) from the Coromandel Coast in India (1775)