‘A PARTNERSHIP IN ART’ ON VIEW AT ALLENTOWN ART MUSEUM

AVV 4-9, #695375

ALLENTOWN, PENN. — The Allentown Art Museum presents the exhibition, “A Partnership in Art: Selected Gifts from Audrey and Bernie Berman,” on view through July 8 in the Trexler Gallery.

Audrey and Bernie Berman were partners in life and in art. Audrey was among the founding members of the Allentown Art Museum’s Society of the Arts in 1964 and was named its Volunteer of the Year in 1965. Bernie’s commitment to the museum also began in the early 1960s and grew through his 17-year presidency of the museum from 1971 to 1988. He remained active in the museum throughout his life and was chosen as a trustee emeritus, the highest honor awarded by the Board of Trustees, shortly before his death in 2006.

Early in Bernie’s tenure as president, the museum built the 1975 wing, designed by Edgar Tafel, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. During that project, the Bermans bought and donated the library from the Francis Little House by Wright, their first of more than 100 gifts of artwork to the museum.

Together they traveled and bought art as they went. Their collecting activities began in 1965 during a trip to Mexico, where they purchased works by José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, and others. The following year the Bermans ventured to Vienna, where they began an abiding interest in the German Expressionists.

In celebration of Audrey and Bernie’s partnership with one another and with the museum, this exhibition recognizes their impact as collectors and benefactors of the Allentown Art Museum. Selections from their many contributions to the museum include photographs by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Gordon Parks; a German Expressionist painting by Erich Heckel and prints by Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Lovis Corinth; and prints by José Clemente Orozco.

The Allentown Art Museum is at 31 North Fifth Street. For more information, www.allentownartmuseum.org or 610-432-4333, extension 10.