Allentown Art Museum

Steve and I were craving those yummy Maple Bacon donuts from Duck Donuts. Since there was a location in Allentown we also planned a visit to the Allentown Art Museum nearby.

Our stop for those Duck Donuts really hit the mark. What could be better that sweet, pillowy pastry with maple glaze anointed with lots of salty, savory bacon. Nothing says breakfast like Maple and Bacon!

As we drove from Duck Donuts to the Allentown Art Museum we passed a gorgeous park with beautiful gardens. We wanted to stop but knew we’d have time for that after the museum.

We arrived at the museum with plenty of time to meander through the many galleries filled with fabulous art and artifacts.

The Allentown Art Museum has been stimulating minds, providing essential art education and programming, and amassing an exceptional collection of meaningful artworks for over 90 years. But it’s only more recently, as of August 2022, that they have been providing access to everyone by offering free admission!

The Allentown Art Museum was founded and incorporated during the Great Depression. It was spurred on by a grassroots effort that was led by teacher, painter, and critic Walter Emerson Baum. The Museum served the community of Allentown for 20 years in a Federal-style house that was owned by the city. In those days it primarily exhibited the works of local artists.

Today the Museum stand on a location that was made necessary to house a new collection that was donated to the Museum. In 1960 and ’61 Samuel H. Kress, a nearby native, gifted the Museum with 53 Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures. The growing art collections influenced the community to buy and renovate a building that would be suitable.

An expansion to the building was completed in 1975 that would allow them to enhance the Museum’s programs and collecting plans. That was when the Museum installed a room designed by the incomparable Frank Lloyd Wright.

From 2010 to 2011, the Museum again underwent renovation to add about 10,000 additional square feet of gallery, storage, and public space. At the same time another 25,000 square feet of existing building was also refurbished.

Today, the Allentown Art Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of art offers their community the opportunity to experience nearly two thousand years of cultural heritage.

A very interesting and admirable statement on their website about Land Acknowledgment:

“The Allentown Art Museum is located in Lënapehòkink, the unceded homeland of the Lenape people. We acknowledge the seizure of this land from the Lenape—and their continuing displacement—as a result of the fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737.

Today, Lenape descendants include the following sovereign nations: Delaware Nation, the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown, the Delaware Tribe, the Munsee-Delaware Nation, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.

We recognize and respect the Lenape people’s enduring connection to this land and honor their thriving communities, past, present, and future. In accordance with our mission of sharing global artistic traditions, we commit ourselves to the ongoing process of creating space for inclusion and collaboration.”

Before we left the Allentown Art Museum we enjoyed an amazing and extensive exhibit of quilts. Be sure to come back to this site next Monday to read about it and see my photos of this extremely colorful and intricate craft.