A Force for Change is the first exhibition of African American art to explore the legacy of The Julius Rosenwald Fund, created in 1917 by Chicago businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald to foster black leadership through the arts, literature and scholarship. The exhibition will feature more than 60 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by over 20 of the artists who were the recipients of Rosenwald fellowships during the Fund?s most active years (1928?1948), a watershed period for the advancement of African American art and culture.

Artists represented in the exhibition are among the foremost of their era, including Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, Katherine Dunham, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Rose Piper and Augusta Savage, among others. With support from The Rosenwald Fund, these talented and multifaceted artists explored through their work the experience of African Americans in an environment of rapid social change and modern instability. Predominate themes encompass the gulf between North and South, and urban and rural, and a search for a lost black past--in some cases, the search for a black essence.

An accompanying publication connects the artists? works to the goals and achievements of The Rosenwald Fund and also emphasizes how the foundation encouraged the black ?Chicago Renaissance? of the 1930s and 1940s.

"The Allentown Art Museum is dedicated to stimulating active exploration of the arts and developing new audiences for the arts within the Lehigh Valley community and beyond. Through the central activities of collection, preservation, study, exhibition, and interpretation of important works of visual art, the Allentown Art Museum fosters greater understanding of artists and their work."
--Mission statement of the Allentown Art Museum (revised and adopted 1998).

The Museum's collection of 11,294 works of art offers our regional community the opportunity to experience more than 700 years of Western cultural heritage, as well as a wide range of ethnically diverse cultures, in an accessible and visitor-friendly environment. The Museum's art history library contains 15,000 titles and 65 current periodicals. These are extraordinary treasures for a community the size of the Lehigh Valley, and are recognized and utilized as such by many of its citizens.