Sterling Boyd Strauser
American, 1907–1995
Winter Scene
Oil on Masonite
Gift of Robert Rasely, 1986. (1986.52)
Marcus Jahmal
American, born 1990
Living off the land, 2021
Oil on canvas
Gift of Stephen and Cynthia Ketchum, New York, 2022. (2022.29)
This haunting scene, in its juxtaposition of the familiar and the unfamiliar, seems to speak to the unsettled and sometimes violent nature of the world in which we currently live and on which, as the title suggests, we depend. Marcus Jahmal leaves the meaning of the image up to our interpretation. What accounts for the apocalyptic landscape, the howling man? Where do we stand in this narrative and what is our responsibility to our fellow human beings and the Earth that is our home?
Brenda Ann Kenneally
American, born 1959
Upstate Girls; Dana at 21, 2008
Digital C‑print
Gift of Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, 2021. (2021.14.8)
Shortly before Dana Schubart brought her daughter home from the hospital, photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally captured her piercing gaze. Kenneally began documenting the lives of young women like Dana in 2004, following them and their families for over a decade. These women all come from a low-income neighborhood in Troy, New York, not far from where Kenneally grew up.
In addition to these portraits, Kenneally makes diagrams that emphasize the lack of stable housing and the overlap between the local school and prison systems. This material is a key part of her exhibitions and publications, illustrating poverty’s systemic nature.
Rigo Peralta
American, born Dominican Republic, 1970
Doña Negra, 2016
Acrylic on linen
Purchase: The Ardath Rodale Art Acquisition Fund, 2019. (2019.7)
This portrait of the artist’s grandmother upends the expected formality of the format and brings its sitter to vibrant life. Analuisa Torres-Peralta was affectionately known as La Negra for her dark skin. In this painting, Doña Negra—at age 94—smokes an Exactus Maduro cigar, made in the Dominican Republic where both she and her grandson were born. The cigar recalls the long history of tobacco growing in the Dominican Republic. It suggests the country’s role in the global economy and references the Indigenous Taino people who cultivated tobacco in the Caribbean islands. The portrait also evokes fond and important memories for the Allentown-based artist, who has said, “It represented an almost sacred ritual to be able to smoke a Dominican cigar with my grandmother.”
Nelson Shanks
American, 1937–2015
Nancy, 1974
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Franklin D. Crawford, Princeton, New Jersey, 1975. (1975.147)
The founder of a school for realist art in Philadelphia, Nelson Shanks is known for his presidential portraits, including those of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, and his portraits of influential women, such as the first four female justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Here Shanks lends gravitas to a more personal depiction of an individual woman.
Keith Haring
American, 1958–1990
Untitled [Free South Africa],
11/21/1984
Black ink and gouache on paper
Private Collection
Haring made multiple works during the mid-1980s protesting apartheid, South Africa’s system of race-based oppression. Here he depicts a large black figure—representing the Black majority in South Africa —struggling against a small white figure that symbolizes the country’s white ruling minority. Haring intended for the simple yet expressive imagery of his art to connect with a wide audience. In the case of his anti-apartheid works, he went even farther to ensure public access, distributing 20,000 copies of a poster with similar imagery in 1986.
Robert Beckman and Ian Short
American, born 1958 and American, born 1936 Palimpsest I, II, and III from the Master Artists Master Printmakers Portfolio, 2003
Screen print, triptych, edition: 50
Printers: Robert Beckman, Ian Short, and John Pusateri, Experimental Printmaking Institute, Easton, PA
Publisher: Experimental Printmaking Institute, Easton, PA
Gift of the Experimental Printmaking Institute, 2017.
(2017.3.6 a, b, c)
Marguerita Mergentime
American, 1894–1941
Food for Thought, 1936
Printed linen plain weave
Gift of Kate Fowler MerleSmith, 1978. (1978.26.570)
Can you imagine the dinner conversations that this tablecloth might spark? Designer Marguerita Mergentime described her table linens as “gustatory and guestatory”—intending them not only as decoration, but also as a catalyst for social interactions.
Mergentime’s playful use of typeface adds a sense of whimsy, suggesting that we shouldn’t take this tablecloth’s words too seriously. But to address the “inevitable arguments caused by eating off this cloth,” she sold it with a companion booklet that defined each of its ninety-eight political sayings.
Corita Kent
American, 1918–1986
greetings, 1967
Screen print
Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2020. (2020.5.2)
When making this print, Kent tore up and reassembled a grocery store poster, then photographed it (below). She used this photo as a guide when cutting stencils to print the yellow
text.
Kent pairs this advertising material with an excerpt from a sermon on the spiritual significance of bread. This surprising juxtaposition suggests the potential for finding the divine in everyday life, a philosophy core to Kent’s artistic practice: until 1968, she was a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a Catholic community.
Image from Julie Ault, Come Alive! The Spirited Art of Sister Corita (London: Four Corners Books, 2006).
Sam Gilliam
American, 1933–2022
Element, 2008
Acrylic on birch
Gift of Sam Gilliam, 2018. (2018.8)
Sam Gilliam emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid-1960s to become one of the great innovators of abstract painting. This painting is part of a group of works that Gilliam called “constructed surprises.” He made these paintings by pouring and mixing paint on birch plywood, then cutting apart the boards and reassembling them. This process is related to the revolutionary painting method Gilliam developed in the late 1960s with his so-called Drape paintings, which involved pouring paint onto unstretched canvas and then hanging the canvas as a three-dimensional artwork.
Robert Motherwell
American, 1915–1991
Wall with Graffiti, 1950
Oil and charcoal on linen
Purchase: Gift of Estelle Reninger and Gift of The Dedalus Foundation, 1994. (1994.24)
Robert Motherwell started his paintings with something he called automatic drawing—random marks on the canvas meant to capture the subconscious. He painted Wall with Graffiti when he was completing a mural at a synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey. Although this painting is abstract, some elements suggest Old Testament references: for instance, the long white stroke at the left, covered with horizontal black marks, brings to mind Jacob’s Ladder, stretching from earth to heaven, and the Diaspora is indicated by a scribbled line drawing which suggests the wandering paths of the scattered tribes.
Gunther Gerzso
Mexican, 1913–2000
Geminis, 1961
Oil on Masonite
Gift of Rodale Family, 2017. (2017.25.1)
Gunther Gerzso described his abstract paintings as “landscapes of the spirit.” While he drew inspiration from the European modernists he worked with earlier in his career, by the 1960s he had turned his attention to the power he saw in Mexico’s terrain and pre-Columbian past. Here, his careful brushwork creates layers of earth-toned forms, and suggests hidden depths.
Will Barnet
American, 1911–2012
Clear Day, 1956
Oil on canvas
Gift of Abe Ajay, 1975. (1975.26)
In this landscape depicting Provincetown, Massachusetts, Barnet creates tension between flat, colorful shapes and a white ground. This abstract style—called Indian Space painting—uses Indigenous aesthetics to reimagine European Cubism. The white artists leading this movement believed that drawing inspiration from Native art would set them apart from European artists: Barnet described Indian Space painting as “real American art.” Do you agree? What do you think makes an artwork American?
Ecuadorian Poncho,
ca. 1950s
Wool, resist-dyed warp
Gift of John Jackson, 2024. (2024.3.9)
Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz
American, born 1930
Converging Yellow Green, 1980
Acrylic on canvas
Gift of Dr. Jacob Bornstein, 1983. (1983.58)
The lines in this painting look like they are vibrating: this is because the painting’s dense stripes and contrast force your eyes to make constant tiny movements that bring different areas in and out of focus. Richard Anuszkiewicz was one of the founders of Op Art, a movement in which artists deliberately created optical illusions in their work. Many of his paintings use intense color and nesting shapes to play with viewers’ perception, creating art that is more about the experience of seeing than the painting itself.
Mary Bauermeister
German, 1934–2023, active in United States 1962–1972
Untitled, 1965
River pebbles on fabric-covered panel
Gift of Carolyn Phillips Minskoff, 1991. (1991.20.1)
Bauermeister glued river rocks and pebbles onto this panel and added comments that question the relationship between art and nature. At upper right, she even labels a painted group of rocks “art,” forcing attention to how this work blurs lines between artwork and found object. Her notes invite us to understand her process, which is as much about ideas as the finished product.
Louise Nevelson
American, 1899–1987
Mirror Shadow XXIV, 1986
Wood
RoBe Collection
Louise Nevelson foraged for the wood for her sculptures on the streets and loading docks of New York City. With attention to pattern, space, and balance, she looked past the everyday functions of objects such as window frames and banisters to use them as aesthetic elements. Her ability to transform such objects into imposing works of art made her one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century.
Jesús Rafael Soto
Venezuelan, 1923–2005
Multiple IV from Jai-Alai, 1969
Plexiglas, wood, metal, nylon string, edition: 300
Gift of James W. Dye, 1979. (1979.56.8)
When you look at or walk around this multiple from Jai-Alai, the work looks like it is pulsing or rippling. Jésus Rafael Soto was fascinated by the idea of movement, which he believed was the next innovation for art to explore. This work not only has the appearance of motion, it also encourages viewers to move around the gallery to better examine it. Soto liked to use optical illusion with the goal of drawing focus away from the artwork itself and toward concepts like movement and time.
Beatrice Mandelman
American, 1912–1998
Co‑Houses, 1940
Lithograph, edition: 25
Printer: Graphic Arts Division, Works Progress Administration, New York, NY
Publisher: Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1998. (1998.20.5)
Michael J. Gallagher
American, 1898–1965
Black Country, 1938
Wood engraving, edition: 25
Printer: Graphic Arts Division, Works Progress Administration, Philadelphia, PA
Publisher: Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1998. (1998.20.1)
Riva Helfond
American, 1910–2002
Old Miner, 1935
Lithograph, edition: 12
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1998. (1998.20.4)
Michael J. Gallagher
American, 1898–1965
Moving Day, 1937
Etching and carborundum print
Printer: Graphic Arts Division, Works Progress Administration, Philadelphia, PA
Publisher: Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1998. (1998.20.2)
Harry Sternberg
American 1904–2001
Coal Mining Town, 1936
Lithograph on wove paper, edition: 30
Printer: Will Barnet, Art Students League, New York, NY
Publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1998. (1998.20.7)
In this work, Sternberg depicts a small mining community at the foot of a looming coal breaker. Two figures in the foreground covertly dig coal from a surface seam—a common but illegal practice during the Great Depression.
This print and its three neighbors to the left use sweeping lines and dramatic angles to evoke work and life in Pennsylvania’s coal region. In the more cheerful painting at right, Franz Kline likewise chooses to exaggerate this region’s steep terrain; look for the coal trains roaring through the background.
Franz Kline
American, 1910–1962
Lehighton, 1945
Oil on canvas
Purchase: Leigh Schadt and Edwin Schadt Art Museum Trust Fund, 2016. (2016.12)
Harry Bertoia
American, 1915–1978
Far left: Untitled, ca. 1950s
Near left: Untitled, ca. 1940s
Monotypes on rice paper
Purchase: SOTA Print Fund, 1992. (1992.5.19)
Gift of Deborah S. Haight, 2001. (2001.6.1)
Harry Bertoia made monotypes at least once a week throughout his career. Many of his prints explore ideas about space and form related to his sculptures. Bertoia had to be slow and careful when making his metal sculptures, but he could work quickly and spontaneously with his prints. He explained, “To do one, then the other, is refreshing and stimulating, and one medium can do what the other could not. Yet at times they merge into a single image.”
Fred Becker
American, 1914–2004
Monsters, 1936
Wood engraving, edition: ca. 25
Publisher: Works Progress Administration,
Federal Art Project, New York, NY
Purchase: Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2017. (2017.18)
Fred Becker
American, 1914–2004
Prehistoric Bird, 1941
Engraving and soft ground etching
Copper plate
Purchase: Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2018. (2018.2.1, 2)
Fred Becker
American, 1914–2004
A Man and His Image, 1957
Etching, deep etching, soft ground etching, and drypoint
Gift of Carla Becker, 2018. (2018.29.3)
Fred Becker
American, 1914–2004
Exquisite Corpse, 1965 (printed 1999)
Woodcut with intaglio wiped wood elements, edition: 25
Gift of Carla Becker, 2018. (2018.29.1)
Exquisite Corpse was a Surrealist drawing game. Starting with a folded piece of paper, someone would draw on one section before passing it to the next person, who would add to the drawing without seeing the previous image. The faux folds in Becker’s Exquisite Corpse suggest a game for five, but this outlandish figure is all his own invention.
Fred Becker
American, 1914–2004
Geomantic Survey, 1975
Deep etching
Gift of Carla Becker, 2018. (2018.29.2)
Harry Bertoia
American, 1915–1978
Wire Construction, 1960–70
Stainless steel wire on a steel base
Gift of Audrey and Bernard Berman, 1985. (1985.36)
Elsie Driggs
American, 1898–1992
Oxen, 1926
Oil on canvas
Purchase: The Reverend and Mrs. Van S. Merle-Smith Jr. Endowment Fund, 1998. (1998.18)
Elsie Driggs is often associated with the Precisionists, a group of American artists who in the 1920s depicted the industrialization and the modernization taking place across a rapidly changing American landscape using precise lines and crisp geometric shapes. Here, however, Driggs finds formal beauty in two oxen, reveling in the rhythmically undulating forms of the animals and the surrounding mountains.
Daniel Garber
American, 1880–1958
Springtime, Tohickon, 1936
Oil on canvas
Partial gift by Anonymous Donor
Louis Lozowick
American, born Ukraine, 1892–1973
First Avenue Market, 1934
Lithograph, edition: 50
Printer: Jacob Friedland, New York, NY
Publisher: Graphic Arts Division, Public Works of Art Program, New York, NY
Gift of Walter E. Baum, 1979. (1979.13)
Milton Avery
American, 1893–1965
Coney Island, 1933
Oil on canvas
Gift of Milton Avery Trust, 1994. (1994.20)
This painting by Milton Avery—one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century—represents the convergence of two major trends in art of the 1930s: social realism and modernism. The former is evident in Avery’s depiction of an ordinary scene at Coney Island, a beach popular at the time with working-class New Yorkers looking to escape the summer heat. Avery’s modernist treatment of his subject includes the painting’s tilted perspective, flattened forms, and multiple focal points.
George Bellows
American, 1882–1925
Dawn of Peace, 1918
Oil on canvas
Purchase: Gift of Estelle Reninger, 1990. (1990.15)
Motivated by a patriotic response to alleged German atrocities during World War I, George Bellows spent more than eight months on this painting. It belongs to a series of at least fifty related works that he created about wartime themes. Bellows probably found inspiration for Dawn of Peace in idealized popular illustrations of Red Cross nurses―the new heroines of the era.
Gifford Reynolds Beal
American, 1879–1956
Hiding the Liberty Bell in Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1938
Oil on Masonite
Gift of the Family of Gifford Beal, 2006. (2006.9)
José Clemente Orozco
Mexican, 1883–1949
The Flag (La Bandera), 1928
Lithograph, edition: 100
Printer: George C. Miller, New York, NY
Gift of Audrey and Bernard Berman, 2000. (2000.1.11)
Made in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910–ca. 1920), this print depicts a dejected group of soldiers carrying a shadowy flag. Its grim tone expresses Orozco’s disillusionment with the bloody conflict—a stark contrast to Gifford Reynolds Beal’s heroic vision of revolution at left.
In an earlier drawing of this scene, Orozco included a dead woman in the foreground. He chose not to use this imagery in his print, however, shifting emphasis to the flag and downcast figures.
José Clemente Orozco
Mexican, 1883–1949
Rocky Ground (Pegregal), 1935
Lithograph, edition: 100
Gift of Audrey and Bernard Berman, 2000. (2000.1.12)
John Marin
American, 1870–1953
From Cape Split, Maine Coast, 1933
Watercolor, graphite, and chalk on wove paper
Purchase: Gift of Deborah S. Haight in Memory of her Husband Prof. John McV. Haight, Jr., 1997. (1997.40)
Stanley William Hayter
English, 1901–1988
Port des Pecheurs, 1928
Lithograph, edition: 10
Printer: Desjoberts, Paris, France
Purchase: Gift of Paul K. Kania, 2020. (2020.3.8)
Robert Henri
American, 1865–1929
Isolina Maldonado—Spanish Dancer, 1921
Oil on canvas
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Altobelli, 1996. (1996.27)
William Zorach
American, 1887–1966
Hauling the Weir—Provincetown, 1916
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Harold Weston
American, 1894–1972
Giant Winter, 1922
Oil on canvas
Purchase: The Reverend and Mrs. Van S. Merle-Smith Jr. Endowment Fund, 1987. (1987.8)
Whiting Manufacturing Company
American silver manufacturer, 1866–1924
Coffee Set, ca. 1880
Sterling Silver, copper, and ivory
Purchase: Gift of Edith M. Merkle in memory of Dr. Ralph Merkle, 2003. (2003.7.1.)
The asymmetrical arrangements of flowers and insects on this coffee service, as well as the use of mixed metals (as in the Japanese vase shown here), demonstrate the influence of Japanese art on American silver designers in the 1870s and 1880s.
Yoshitsugu
Japanese, active late 1800s
Nogawa Company, manufacturer
Japanese, est. 1825
Vase with Tree Branch Motif
Mixed metal inlay
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Finkelstein, 1967. (1967.177.1)
Italian
Length, ca. 1913
Silk and foil‑wrapped silk thread brocade
Gift of Kate Fowler Merle‑Smith, 1974. (1974.79.294)
Louis Comfort Tiffany
American, 1848–1933
Tiffany & Company, manufacturer
New York, NY, 1837–present
Albert A. Southwick, designer
Presentation Vase with Cover, ca. 1915
Sterling silver with Limoges porcelain enamel decoration
Gift of Bethlehem Steel Co., 1985. (1985.25a, b)
Louis Comfort Tiffany was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the famous jeweler and founder of Tiffany & Company. He started his career as a painter, becoming the firm’s chief designer after his father’s death in 1902. This vase reproduces, in enamel, two Louis Comfort Tiffany paintings representing the Roman goddesses Flora and Ceres, and their retinues. The enamel was thinly applied, allowing the engraved sketch to show through.
Tiffany & Company had participated in every world’s fair since the Paris Exposition of 1855, and thus gained an international reputation. This urn was created as a demonstration piece for San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific Exposition. It showcases the quality and sumptuousness of Tiffany products, in order to entice clients to place orders. In 1922, it was presented to Charles M. Schwab, chairperson of Bethlehem Steel, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.
Frank Lloyd Wright
American, 1867–1959
Side Chair, ca. 1903
Oak and leather
Gift of Deborah S. Haight, 1997. (1997.6)
Frank Lloyd Wright designed this chair for a house he built for the Little family in Peoria, Illinois. When the Littles moved to Minnesota and had Wright design another house for them, they brought some of the furniture with them. This chair may, in fact, have been used in the library you see through this window, which is from the Little’s Minnesota home.
Unlike other progressive designers of his era, Wright drew inspiration from machine production. In this rectilinear chair, he makes obvious use of plain, machine-produced boards. The simplicity of his design highlights the beautiful arrowhead shapes in the wood’s grain, which can be seen on the chair back.
Attributed to Allen and Brother
Philadelphia, PA, active 1835–1896
Aesthetic Movement Desk,
1875–1880
American cherry, maple, and walnut; gilt and painted slate tiles
Purchase: Gift of Edith M. Merkle in Memory of Dr. Ralph Merkle, 2005. (2005.26)
This desk achieves an “artistic” look by evoking Japanese lacquer—with a little Gothic-inspired carving added for good measure. To mimic lacquer’s dark polish, the manufacturer treated the desk’s wood with iron acetate: this created a chemical reaction called ebonizing that colored the wood black. The desk’s gold panels with nature scenes echo lacquerware’s decorated surfaces.
Members of the Aesthetic movement valued beautiful furniture because they believed an attractive home would improve everyday life.
American or European
Side Chair, ca. 1880
Mahogany with mother-of-pearl, metal, and wood marquetry
Purchase: Gift of the King Family and General Acquisitions Fund, 2004. (2004.16.1)
American
Dress, 1920s
Silk, rhinestones, sequins, glass beads
Gift of Susan Opie, 2008. (2008.21.16)
Cree or Ojibwe
Collar, ca. 1900–1950
Moosehide, glass beads
Gift of Wendy Ellsworth, 2017. (2017.24.22)
These garments come from different contexts, but share a common material: European-made glass seed beads.
The black dress, with beads, sequins, and rhinestones on silk, showcases a popular style of embellishment from the 1920s. Embraced as modern, these slick and shiny garments required hours of handwork to create. Beaders—usually female laborers paid by the piece—strung the tiny beads, then stitched down each string to execute an assigned design.
On the other hand, the vibrant floral collar reflects longstanding beadwork traditions practiced in both Cree and Ojibwe culture. The artist likely beaded this collar for herself or a loved one, and attached it to a garment such as a jacket or dance regalia. The time-intensive nature of beadwork, and its connotations of identity, resilience, and spirituality lends such garments immense significance.
American
Handbag, ca. 1920s
Glass beads, celluloid
Gift of the Ellie Laubner Collection, 2009. (2009.12.238)
Emil Lukas
American, born 1964
Expander, 2020
Thread over wood frame with plaster, paint, and nails
Purchase: The Estelle Reninger Fund, 2022. (2022.1)
You may have noticed Emil Lukas’s “thread painting” Expander appearing to change as you approached it. Using simple materials to create a complex piece, the artist wrapped variously colored threads in painstaking fashion around a frame, producing an illusory depth and aura that deceives the eye. Lukas, who is based in northeastern Pennsylvania, works improvisationally but with intention. Every decision—the placement of a single thread a fraction of an inch one way or another, the color of that thread, and the layering—contributes to the overall effect on the viewer’s perception.
Joan Snyder
American, born 1940
Moon Theater, 1986
Oil, acrylic and linen on canvas
Purchase: Gift of Sam Spektor and Ann Berman in Honor of Bernard Berman, 1989. (1989.42)
Moon Theater presents not one moon but a bounty of twenty-six. These are scattered around a stylized tree/crucifix form, a recurrent motif in Snyder’s work that symbolizes life and death. Snyder’s emotional paintings challenged the impersonal nature of male-led art movements like Minimalism, and made her an influential feminist artist. She explained, “Making art is, for me, practicing a religion. … My work is my pride, creates for me a heritage. It is a place to struggle freely at my altar.”
Joan Snyder
American, born 1940
Field of Moons from The New Provincetown Print Project
Monoprint in oil, with woodcut, edition: 5
Printers: Joan Snyder and Bob Townsend, R. E. Townsend Studio, Georgetown, MA
Publisher: Fine Art Work Center, Provincetown, MA
Gift of Joan Snyder, 1993. (1993.35)
Ilse Getz
American, 1917–1992
The Dream, No. 3, 1972
Wood, porcelain, polychrome
Gift of the Artist in Memory of David Getz, 1975. (1975.162.2)
This composition uses a typesetter’s drawer as a background for a mysterious selection of toys and miniatures. For Getz, these old-fashioned objects brought back memories of her childhood in Germany. Forced to leave the country at sixteen because of the rise of the Nazis, as an adult she looked back on her childhood as a lost time filled with wonder.
Ilse Getz lived in New York City, but often came to her Bucks County studio to work and collect antiques for her art.