ALLENTOWN, PA.- With an official opening day of Sunday, September 9, 2018, the fall exhibitions at the Allentown Art Museum will bring art to the Lehigh Valley that spans centuries and geographies. The Museum’s entire second floor will feature art from the Caribbean and Central America in three must-see exhibitions that will showcase the vitality of the region’s artistic traditions and explore themes of spirituality, cultural exchange, trade, and colonization.

Power and Piety: Spanish Colonial Art
August 25 (soft opening)–December 9, 2018
Power and Piety will present 56 paintings, sculpture, silver pieces, furniture, and other decorative devotional objects that attest to the tremendous interchange of cultures that occurred in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of the Caribbean basin from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries. Designed for use in Catholic churches, convents, and monasteries and in private homes, these objects were made by artisans from the Americas but based on the iconographies, styles, and methods of the European Renaissance. Included are masterpieces from artists such as Jose Campeche, generally considered the most accomplished painter active in Puerto Rico during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The exhibition is drawn from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and is co-organized by the Museum of Biblical Art, New York, and Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia. There will be a free guided tour of the exhibition every Sunday throughout the run of the show at 2 p.m.

Molas: Social Fabric
August 25 (soft opening)–December 9, 2018
Molas are colorful reverse-appliqué panels made by the Guna, an indigenous people who live in Panama. Since the 1600s the Guna have maintained trade and diplomatic relations with Western countries. Guna women began using foreign trade cloth to create bold mola panels for their blouses around the turn of the 20th century. Today molas are an important symbol of Guna pride and political independence as well as a key source of income for many Guna families. Molas: Social Fabric presents a selection of works that reflect the vitality of Guna culture, with imagery ranging from Central American wildlife to Elvis Presley. The exhibition is drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection.

Angel Suarez-Rosado: Talisman
September 9–December 16, 2018
Puerto Rican–born, Easton-based artist Angel Suarez-Rosado will create a site-specific installation in the Museum’s Rodale Gallery. Suarez-Rosado transforms ordinary objects, imbuing them with power, in a practice related to Espiritismo (Spiritism) and Santería, which combine elements of Yoruba religion with Catholicism. Conceived of as an offering to the community and comprised of paintings, sculptures, and found and natural objects, Talisman mixes ritual and artistic traditions. As stated by fellow artist Raquelín Mendieta, “Spirituality and art are one and the same. Works of art are prayers on the altar of life.” Suarez-Rosado will be in Rodale Gallery on opening day, September 9, from noon till 4 p.m. to talk with visitors about his work.

The other two exhibitions opening on September 9 are The Soviet Lens, which highlights images by Soviet photojournalists Dmitri Baltermants and Mark Markov-Grinberg, who worked under a government that censored and denied photographers the status of artists; and in Trexler Hall Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #793A. Since the late 1960s, LeWitt’s abstract wall drawings have challenged traditional ideas about what art could be.