Allentown Art Museum

Allentown, Pennsylvania
What first tempted me up the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike was the rumor that a whole room of a Frank Lloyd Wright house was part and parcel of the museum's new wing. Wrightiana is scarce enough in these parts to make such a trip mandatory. And there it is, the library from the Francis W. Little House, Wayzata, Minnesota (1912-1914).

By a nice bit of preservationist timing, a student of Wright, Edgar Tafel, was designing a new wing when the Met's Thomas Hoving managed to save the entire Wright house from the wrecker's bulldozer, installing some of it in the Met's American Wing, and selling off parts to other interested institutions. The former Taliesin Fellow has designed, by way of prologue to the room, a stunning photomural explaining the Wright heritage. And the library itself peeks out onto a lovely sculpture court.

But that is merely the top gem in the Allentown diadem. On the fringe of Pennsylvania Dutch country, it has a tasty room full of their folk art, in which, among other magical gestures, the butter-pat print approaches the finest of arts. Like most smaller museums, Allentown's finest art is getting the biggest possible bang out of its limited bucks. It's most memorable achievement in this area still gives memory pleasure.

Henry McIlhenny, a pillar of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has the summer habit of putting his first-rate collection in storage while he's away from the city. A few seasons back Director Richard N. Gregg had the luminous notion of "storing" the McIlhenny swag for a summer. But not content to simply flash the stuff, Gregg devised a pedagogical entry room where Allentowners could avoid the "bends" when suddenly confronted with such an unaccustomed load of treasure.

It explored brilliantly illuminating byways of the context of French impressionism, such as the connections (heretofore unknown to me) between, say, Degas and Zola. It was a superb example of how a small museum can do more than tug its forelock before a great collector. The museology behind that show is a permanent benchmark about how less can become more if an energized sensibility presents a show. A catalog is on sale in a very good gallery shop.

--from 20 Museums You've Never Heard Of/Horizon Magazine 1981