The Julius Rosenwald Fund, established by the Chicagoan in 1917, was one of the earliest - perhaps even the first - fellowship programs designed to help struggling painters, sculptors, and printmakers. It was directed mainly at African Americans, particularly southerners, and it had a demonstrable impact.

At $1,000, the Rosenwald grants weren't large by today's standards (equivalent to about $13,000 today), although during the Depression decade of the 1930s that amount could carry an artist a long way. For instance, sculptor Augusta Savage was able to work and study in Paris for three years on three successive one-year stipends.

As for impact, an exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum presents an impressive roster of black artists who benefitted from Rosenwald's largesse. Besides Savage, they include Charles Alston, Selma Burke, Elizabeth Catlett, Joseph Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Charles White, and Hale Woodruff.

The exhibition of 62 works by 22 artists was organized by the Spertus Museum in Chicago, which is devoted to of Jewish history, religion, and culture. While the show includes many famous names and signature works, such as Douglas' painting Harriet Tubman and eight screenprints from Lawrence's "The Legend of John Brown," it's primarily a paean to Rosenwald as an enlightened philanthropist.

Born in 1862, Rosenwald is remembered as a Chicago businessman who built Sears, Roebuck and Co. into the largest mail-order firm in the world. Before he died in 1932, he gave about $63 million to various charities.

The Rosenwald Fund was the heart of his philanthropy. Besides assisting visual artists, singers such as Marian Anderson, and dancers such as Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus (represented in the show with performance DVDs), the fund supported improved education for blacks in the rural South.

Most of the art in the show was created during the recipients' fellowship year or years. The level of talent is impressive, and not just because many of the fund artists have become key figures in black art history.

In fact, these artists give the show a mild déjà vu quality; you know them, you expect to find them here, you might even know some of the works that have become iconic, particularly Harriet Tubman, Savage's portrait head of a black youth called Gamin, and Parks' memorable photographic restatement of American Gothic - a black charwoman posing with a mop and a broom.

It's the unfamiliar names, which demonstrate that the fund didn't just subsidize the already well-connected, that give the exhibition its spice.

One of these is the Pittsburgh photographer Gilbert Dwoyid Olmstead (1914-85), awarded a fellowship in 1946. Olmstead was a truck driver and factory worker who, after taking up photography in the 1940s, documented life in Pittsburgh's Hill district.

Rose Piper (1917-2005), who won successive fellowships in 1946 and 1947, is represented by two semi-abstract oils, both lent by university art collections. The more striking of the two is Slow Down Freight Train, composed around a stylized figure whose torso is defined by a bold passage of bright red.

These two artists typify those included in the show - born during the first two decades of the 20th century, their careers began to flower in the 1930s and early 1940s. This was a time when African American art was invigorated by the Harlem Renaissance and supported by organizations such as the Rosenwald Fund and the Harmon Foundation.

The exhibition, then, not only celebrates philanthropy that was ahead of its time, it also marks an efflorescence of African American culture.

That said, it's interesting to note that two of the artists in the Allentown show are white, although their art suggests otherwise. One is painter Robert Gwathmey (1903-88), the other painter-printmaker Lamar Baker (1908-94).

They were among 13 white southerners who received Rosenwald fellowships, presumably because their work expressed empathy for and understanding of black life.

Photography times three. "New Visions," a collaboration among the Allentown museum and two nearby schools, Lehigh University in Bethlehem and Lafayette College in Easton, looks at a private collection of 20th-century photography formed by Anne and Arthur Goldstein of New York City.

Originally shown at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, which organized it, the exhibition of about 100 photographs, all black and white, was too large for the museum, so it invited the two schools to share the wealth. Consequently, the museum has about two-fifths of the total show, Lehigh about one-third, and Lafayette the rest.

The division is broadly thematic, although the categories are somewhat amorphous. Allentown's theme is "Imagination," Lehigh's is "Identity," and Lafayette's is "Memory." The individual shows aren't concurrent. If you want to see everything, you have until Oct. 18, when Lafayette's portion closes.

While the thematic divisions are somewhat arbitrary, they at least help viewers to impose some logic and coherence on what otherwise would be a simple parade of reputations.

There's a lot on offer at Allentown, from Robert Adams and Diane Arbus to Jerry Uelsmann and William Wegman. Except for a 20-print suite by Tacita Dean, each photographer is represented by one picture.

Uelsmann, a pre-Photoshop virtuoso of improbable illusions, can't be topped when it comes to imagination. His image of a small rowboat hovering at the base of a waterfall is the show's most surreal and startling. (But why do I suspect that this "waterfall" might be water flowing over a curbstone?)

By concentrating on black-and-white photography, the Goldsteins are valorizing the basic light-and-shadow interplay that defined the medium from 1839 until the mid-20th century.

The advent of digital photography has made color ubiquitous; consequently, this show is a bit of a time capsule that reintroduces us to the merits of thinking and seeing the world as patterns of light and dark.

Art: Fruits of Funding

The Rosenwald Fund exhibition and "New Visions," the Goldstein photography collection, continue at the Allentown Art Museum, 31 N. Fifth St., through Jan. 10. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and noon to 5 Sundays. Admission is $6 general, $4 for visitors 60 and older and students with I.D., and $3 for visitors six to 12. Free Sundays. There is a $7 surcharge at all times for the Rosenwald show. Information 610-432-4333 or www.allentownartmuseum.org.

"New Visions" continues in the Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh University, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem, through Nov. 1. Information 610-758-3615 or www.luag.org. Oct. 18 is the closing date at the Williams Art Center at Lafayette College, 317 Hamilton St., Easton. Information: 610-330-5361 or www.lafayette.edu/williamsgallery.