Tag Archive "coal-and-steel"

Franz Kline’s roots in coal and steel – at Allentown Art Museum

When I attended the curator’s talk at Franz Kline: Coal and Steel at the Allentown Art Museum (to Jan. 13, 2013), I noticed several Pennsylvania Power and Light (PPL) employees in the audience enjoying a cultural lunch hour. Their presence and PPL’s sustaining sponsorship of the museum make an appropriate backdrop for a regional reassessment of this major American artist, who, along with Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, is considered one of the top three Abstract Expressionists. Highlighting Kline’s childhood and attachment to the industrial Lehigh Valley, Coal and Steel unites Kline’s early realism with his late abstraction, framing the ... More » »