The museum maintains a collection of over 19,000 works of art and is a major regional art institution. The museum also maintains a library and archives containing over 16,000 titles and 40 current periodicals.
Allentown Art Museum was founded originally as Allentown Art Gallery and organized by Walter Emerson Baum. It opened in Allentown's Hunsicker School on March 17, 1934. With 70 canvases by local Pennsylvania impressionist artists on display, the gallery attracted major attention from 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 John E. Berninger, a local artist who lived with his wife on the museum's second floor.
In 1959, a gift of 53 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 served to encourage community visionaries and museum friends to purchase and refurbish a building, formerly the First Presbyterian Church, built in 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 observed how the fleeting imagery of TV changed perceptions of the collection's works. When created, they were not merely one of many representations of religious figures but of the figures themselves.[3] Hirsch's observations portend the Slow Movement that arose over 25 years later and encouraged a renewed, attentive appreciation of the world, including of fine art. The museum later began hosted Slow Art days in 2011 to acknowledge the benefits of quiet, intense reflection.
In 1975, an Edgar Tafel-designed expansion to the building enhanced the museum's programs and collecting plans. The museum installed a library from the second Francis W. Little House that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. A second room from the Francis W. Little House was built at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
In 2010, the museum completed a $15.4 million expansion project designed by Venturi Scott Brown, a Philadelphia-based architecture firm to renovate the museum. The project added 7,900 square feet (730 m2) of new classroom and gallery space, including a corner cafe, an expanded gift shop, and a new all-glass façade to the museum's Fifth Street side.
The expansion, which was the museum's first since 1975, had been initially proposed in 1999 but ended up to be a significant reduction from the $32 million, 45,000-square-foot (4,200 m2) addition originally planned.[4] Approximately 40% of the new space was allocated to gallery space.[5]
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]
Rembrandt's Portrait of a Young Lady
On February 10, 2020, Portrait of a Young Lady, a 1632 portrait by Rembrandt in the museum's collection, was determined to be authentic following a reassessment of it.[8]
^The Samuel H. Kress Memorial Collection of the Allentown Art Museum. Allentown, Pa. The Museum, 1960
^Moser, John J. (April 24, 2010), "Art museum plans smaller expansion ** Economy hurts fundraising, but a $15.4 million project is set to begin next month.", The Morning Call, pp. A.1
^Sozanski, Edward (August 15, 2010), "Art: What is art's place in the picture?", The Philadelphia Inquirer
