Allentown Art Museum

Rock-and-roll music embodies the spirit of several generations, which is to say raucous and sometimes transgressive behavior by both musicians and their fans, idol worship and mass hysteria. These effects have been observed before, particularly in young people - remember crooners and bobby-soxers? - but rock-and-roll has been an especially persistent and powerful shaper of popular culture. Why else would public television still be reviving musical acts from the 1960s to solicit contributions during periodic fund drives?

Clothing isn't just to wear, it can be transmuted into sculpture, with all its implications - metaphor, poetry, narrative and form that represents the human body. Martha Posner doesn't make sculpture from real clothing, she creates forms of wire and stiffened fabric that mimic common garments such as coats and shirts. But while the references in her exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum are familiar, the effects they produce have nothing to do with adornment. They evoke mystery, myth, even a mild terror - one "shirt" is studded with wicked-looking thorns from a locust tree.

While traveling in Japan during 1902, American lumber millionaire Eldridge Fowler assembled a large collection of Japanese prints that documented the history of the woodblock print from the late 17th to the late 19th centuries. Fowler's collection included two complete sets of the 55-print series called The Great Tokaido Road by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), the most famous Japanese print artist of his time. One of those sets is the centerpiece of a handsome and stimulating exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum called "Sightseeing in Paradise.

In recent years, art museums of all sizes have become more concerned with how they present their permanent collections. A fundamental truth drives this concern - permanent collections, the bedrock of all museums, can't be taken for granted. A museum must constantly re-evaluate its installations, not only to accommodate new scholarship and new acquisitions but to stimulate its public. That's why the Philadelphia Museum of Art is engaged in an extensive project to reinstall its entire body of European art, and why the Metropolitan Museum of Art has reinterpreted its 19th-century European holdings.

Antiques/Art/Crafts .Art Show & Auction to Benefit Haiti All proceeds go to Haiti relief organization Partners in Health. Green Line Cafe - Powelton Village, 3649 Lancaster Ave.; 215-382-2143. 2/19. Beneath the Surface: Graphic Design From Iran Examples of Iranian graphic design that touch on social issues, politics, environment, education, art, and so forth. Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, 311 N. Fifth St., Camden; 856-225-2700. 2/19. Lehigh Valley Going Green Exhibit showcasing some of the area commercial, institutional & residential building projects that qualify as "green.

The Allentown Art Museum is presenting white-on-white works this week by Angelo Savelli, a former resident of Springtown in northern Bucks County who now lives in Manhattan. Featured in this one-man show is work done during the last 30 years by Savelli, an Italian sometimes called Rome's first abstract expressionist. Savelli is best known in this area for establishing the painting program at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts and teaching there throughout the 1960s.

The high reputation of Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery rests on its solid collection of modern painting and sculpture. However, in the last decade, the institution has concentrated on acquiring one-of-a-kind works on paper, and a traveling exhibition, currently at the Allentown Art Museum, demonstrates that in this area, too, the Buffalo museum has achieved distinction. In this show, works, sometimes unexpected ones, by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Joan Miro, Winslow Homer, Charles Burchfield and Edward Hopper hang side by side with those of Gwen John, Lovis Corinth, Sonia Delaunay, Oscar Bluemner, Gifford Beal, George Bellows, Emil Nolde, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly and Susan Rothenberg.

Any art museum that desires to attract adolescent males (that is, males up to the age of about 25) might follow the lead of the Allentown Art Museum and stage an exhibition like "At the Edge: Art of the Fantastic. " In a catalog statement, the museum's president and chief executive officer, J. Brooks Joyner, calls this extensive display of fantasy art "the first of its kind and scale to be undertaken by a museum of fine arts in America. " I can believe it, because art museums traditionally consider art of this kind to be beyond the pale - overtly commercial, lurid, and devoid of serious aesthetic character.

Passing the Barnes Foundation's sprawling new parking lot one recent afternoon, I was surprised to see half the spaces were empty. By evening, however, the joint was jumping, the lot was full, and many female visitors were wearing skyscraper heels, rather than the sensible flats of the serious museumgoer. That's when it hit me that the real motive for cramming the lot onto the Barnes' tiny site was to help the gallery promote itself as a party venue. The Barnes is not alone in chasing after the lucrative events business.

Rock-and-roll music embodies the spirit of several generations, which is to say raucous and sometimes transgressive behavior by both musicians and their fans, idol worship and mass hysteria. These effects have been observed before, particularly in young people - remember crooners and bobby-soxers? - but rock-and-roll has been an especially persistent and powerful shaper of popular culture. Why else would public television still be reviving musical acts from the 1960s to solicit contributions during periodic fund drives?

The most exciting art season in years is upon us, with the opening this weekend at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts of a major survey of Henry Ossawa Tanner's landmark career and an exhibition of Vincent van Gogh's nature paintings just around the corner at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Art Museum will follow van Gogh with another monumental subject: how three artistic giants - Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, and Paul Gauguin -...

After being closed for nearly a year, the Allentown Art Museum is back in business in a larger, more visitor-friendly building. While less than half the 7,900 square feet added in the expansion and renovation is devoted to exhibiting art, the reconfigured museum now displays its collection more effectively, while adding a gallery for special exhibitions, The redesign is more functional than spectacular. Philadelphia architects Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates captured the extra space by pushing the front of the museum out to the sidewalk and by enclosing a rear patio formerly used to display sculpture.

There's now a familiar resonance about the comfortable way artists from across the commonwealth come together annually to participate in Harrisburg's "Art of the State" displays. This year's 44th juried exhibition - widely recognized as the official statewide competition for Pennsylvania artists - features 135 works by 133 artists from 35 counties, chosen from 1,933 entries submitted by 727 artists. Its location is the official State Museum of Pennsylvania, which has 4.5 million objects in its collections, and 100,000 square feet of permanent and temporary exhibition space in a doughnut-shaped building next to the State Capitol.

Antiques/Art/Crafts Ab n' Jacks All-Betterfest VI Live music featuring 10 bands, arts & crafts vendors, food & camping. 856-287-5001. Snipes Farm & Golf, 890 W. Bridge St., Morrisville. abnjacks.com. $20 advance; $25 day of event; free for children under 12. 8/7. In Stitches: Quilts From the Allentown Art Museum Allentown Art Museum, 31 N. Fifth St., Allentown; 610-432-4333. Regular admission plus $7. 8/6. RNS Show House at the Shore: Windsong on Wesley Annual exhibition of interior design rooms featuring decorative painting & outdoor living spaces.