Acquisition News: Allentown Art Museum acquires major work

Untitled, 1974, oil and graphite on canvas (four parts), 102 x 124 in. (259.1 x 315 cm) (overall)

Allentown Art Museum
acquires major early painting by Joan Witek

Allentown, PA — The Estate of Joan Witek in collaboration with Hunter Dunbar Projects and Artist Estate Studio LLC announce today the acquisition of a major early painting by Joan Witek (1943–2026) by the Allentown Art Museum–a pivotal work from the artist's formative period and a significant addition to the Museum's holdings in postwar and contemporary geometric abstraction.

"This painting marks the moment Joan Witek found her voice as an artist—the first work in which she committed fully to black, to line, and to the rigorous geometry that would define her practice for the next five decades," said Max Weintraub, President and CEO of the Allentown Art Museum. "Acquiring a work of this significance allows us to tell a fuller story not only about the development of geometric abstraction but also about a painter whose practice has only recently begun receiving the sustained critical and institutional attention it deserved from the start. We're thrilled to welcome it into the Museum's collection."

The Estate of Joan Witek welcomed the acquisition. "Joan spent five decades in quiet, exacting conversation with the color black—testing what a single color, patiently layered, could hold," said Jason Andrew, manager of the Estate of Joan Witek and and Founding Director at Artist Estate Studio LLC. "This early painting is where that conversation begins. We are grateful to the Allentown Art Museum for recognizing its importance and for giving it a permanent home where it can be studied alongside other amazing works within the collection. It is exactly the kind of institutional attention Joan's practice has long deserved, and we're proud to see this chapter of her career take its place in the Museum's collection."​