November 16, 2024 through July 6, 2025

Scheller and Fowler Galleries

For six decades, the Allentown Art Museum’s Renaissance and Baroque holdings have been a unique asset for our community. New Conversations reengages with this important collection, showcasing a core of familiar works in dialogue with contemporary art, monumental textiles, and recent acquisitions. This exhibition features several new acquisitions on view for the first time, such as Virgin of Montserrat, a rare eighteenth-century Peruvian painting that reflects the tradition of the Black Madonna; and Andrea del Brescianino’s Madonna and Child with Angel, transferred to the Museum in 2024 from Saint John’s Lutheran Church in Allentown via the Kress Foundation. Other highlights include a varied selection of contemporary works, ranging from Angel Suarez-Rosado’s portrayal of Saint Sebastian to Creighton Michael’s unexpected sculptures of seventeenth-century ruffs. Offering intriguing juxtapositions and fresh potential for exploration, the works newly on view illustrate Renaissance and Baroque art’s continued relevance for us today. New Conversations also invites visitor participation via in-gallery interactives. In advance of the Renaissance and Baroque holdings’ return to the renovated Kress Gallery next summer, this exhibition suggests renewed significance and possibilities for this beloved collection.

November 16, 2024 through April 27, 2025

Abelardo Morell’s unconventional photographs provoke curiosity and wonder. Using optical science as well as illusion, he reimagines the world around us. Morell (American, b. Cuba, 1948) is best known for his use of the camera obscura process. A camera obscura is an ancient technology—a darkened room that admits light through a pinhole, projecting an image of the view outside onto the opposite wall. Morell’s innovation is in transforming everyday spaces into camera obscura: his projections interact with the room’s furniture and décor, and he photographs the results. Intermingling past and present, indoors and outside, these works encourage reflection on our relationship with memory, nature, and place. Unexpected Perspectives features sixteen of Morell’s inventive photographs drawn from the Museum’s holdings. In addition to his camera obscura works, this exhibition also highlights a selection of photographs from Flowers for Lisa. This varied series of floral still lifes alludes to philosophy, art history, and mortality through both physical and digital manipulations.

Morell’s complex images subvert our expectations, uncovering new interest and beauty in familiar subjects. As he explains, “It’s encouraging to see strangeness come out of what we all know.”