The Allentown Art Museum will be honoring our nation’s 250th anniversary throughout 2026, spotlighting a work from our collection each month in our weekly eblasts and on our social-media channels.
Our first image is this iconic painting that’s on view in our American galleries. Artist Gifford Reynolds Beal captures a powerful moment from local history: cavalrymen bringing the Liberty Bell to Allentown in September 1777. To protect it from being melted down by the British for ammunition, the Bell was one of eleven evacuated from Philadelphia. Beal imagined the dramatic scene as soldiers and townspeople strain together to lift the heavy bell from the wagon before hiding it in the basement of Zion’s Reformed Church on Hamilton Street, just a few blocks from our current location.
This painting was created as a study for one of ten murals commissioned for the Allentown Post Office as part of the Works Progress Administration, a federal program during the Great Depression that supported artists while documenting local history.
Experience this story of resilience, art, and community firsthand in the Museum, open Thursday through Sunday 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and on the third Thursday of each month from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. Admission is always free, and there’s free parking in the Museum’s lot.
Shown: Gifford Reynolds Beal (American, 1879-1956), Hiding the Liberty Bell in Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1938, oil on Masonite. Allentown Art Museum: Gift of the family of Gifford Beal, 2006.