The Allentown Art Museum is pleased to announce that three paintings by leading American Modernist artists, loaned by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, will be on view from August 20, 2026, through August 13, 2028. The works are included in the new rotation of artworks installed in our American galleries.
Joseph Stella (1877–1946), Dance of Spring (Song of the Birds), 1924, oil on canvas, 42 3/8 x 32 3/8 in. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, 2003.03.01.
Inspired by the European avant-garde, American artists including Arthur Bowen Davies, Arthur Dove, and Joseph Stella began to explore new ways of portraying their world during the early twentieth century. For instance, Davies’s Interwoven borrows from the vocabulary of Cubism, using fragmented geometry to convey the dancing movements of his figures. Dove, on the other hand, uses organic forms and color in October to suggest an explosion of fall foliage. And Stella’s stylized flowers and rays of light in Dance of Spring (Song of the Birds) draw on memories of his childhood in rural Italy.
Arthur Bowen Davies (1862–1928), Interwoven, 1916, oil on canvas, 22 x 28 in. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the William T. Kemper Charitable Trust, UMB Bank, n.a., Trustee, 1995.017.01.
In conversation with the Museum’s collection, these works will illustrate the experimentation that characterizes Modernist art, as well as the increasingly global art community of the early twentieth century.
These loans are supported by an Art and Wellness grant from the Art Bridges Foundation and will feature in the Museum’s accompanying program series of Community Art Circles, which foster social, emotional, and cognitive well-being for community partners.
Generously lent by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, as part of Art Bridges’ Partner Loan Network.
Shown at top: Arthur Dove (1880–1946), October (detail), 1935, oil on canvas, 14 x 70 in. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the R. C. Kemper Charitable Trust, 1996.16.01.