Sun, 10/16/2011 – Sun, 01/22/2012
Payne Hurd Gallery
In 1966, the Allentown Art Museum established a formative educational objective to build a collection of original prints that would reflect and amplify the museum’s permanent collections as they grew over future years. The museum’s Kress Collection of Old Master paintings and sculpture provided the initial core inspiration guiding the acquisition of Old Master graphic art, and this part of the collection has grown impressively since that early initiative. In fall of 2011, conjunction with the two installations of Kress paintings comprised the Shared Treasure exhibition, a small but choice complementary gathering of works on paper from this Old Master graphic art collection were on view in the Payne Hurd Gallery.
The exhibition not only illuminated how the great artists of the Renaissance and Baroque eras promoted their paintings through engravings but also revealed how these artists could use the printmaking media to reveal aspects of their creativity in an alternative, more immediate and accessible venue.