The restored mural of Lehighton, painted by renowned abstract artist and Lehighton native Franz Kline, will be the featured attraction at an unveiling Sunday afternoon at the Allentown Art Museum.

For 70 years, the 6-by-14-foot mural hung in the American Legion Post 314 in Lehighton, available to a limited audience. Now it will be viewable to the public at large for years to come.“The piece deserved to be saved,” said Chris Potash, manager of marketing and public relations at the museum. “By hanging it here so close to where he grew up, it has that regional tie.”Potash said Kline was born in Wilkes-Barre, but was raised in Lehighton. He graduated from high school there in the early 1930s, was captain of the football team and well-liked. After he moved to New York City, he still came back to visit his mother.“It was known around town when he was home,” Potash said.It was on one of these visits that the idea for the mural came up. And so he agreed to paint an interpretation of the landscape of Lehighton. It was completed in 1945.Elizabeth Nunan, associate restorer with Luca Bonetti Painting Conservation in New York City, said Kline painted the work on a canvas that he first glued to the wall with water-based glue. It was the medium he was accustomed to using, she said.“He was used to it and knew what to expect of it,” she said.Some muralists paint directly on the surface of the wall. Had that been the case, then the entire piece would not have been removable. Nunan said sometimes small pieces like frescoes can be removed, but nothing this large.Even though it is on canvas, “it’s unusual to remove an entire painting from a wall,” she said.This painting is not an abstract, as far as abstracts go, but it is an interpretation of how Kline saw Lehighton, Nunan said.“I’m able to see the parallels between the landscape of the mountains and how he was inspired by them,” she said. It comes out in “how he approached buildings and colors. He was continuously fed and inspired by what he experienced in Lehighton.”Kline was also known for painting or sketching a scene as it is, and then using that to create an abstract later. She thinks the mural was the foundation from which he grew abstract paintings.“It’s nice to see this (mural) in contrast to his more well-known black-and-white paintings,” she said. “I really like it. It’s not your typical landscape. He really infused his feelings into it. He made a vision of Lehighton that is uniquely his.”The idea to restore the mural actually began in 1999, Luca Bonetti said. That’s when he was first approached about it. Initially, the idea was to restore it in place, and of course, there was the cost. Last year, the Allentown Art Museum purchased the work. A kick-start fundraiser brought in $20,000, with at least half of that donated by residents from the Lehighton area, Potash said. In October, Bonetti and his team came out and delicately removed it from the wall.“First we had to find out what type of sulfactant was used to adhere it to the wall,” Nunan said.Once that was known, they covered the surface with squares of Japanese rice paper to keep it intact. In order to move it, the painting was wrapped around a large cardboard tube at least a foot in diameter, about an inch thick, and several feet long. It was taken to the Creativity Center in Allentown where tears were repaired, and then it was brought to the museum for final restoration, Potash said.“It’s a special case,” Bonetti said. “We don’t get this kind of work very often.”From the center, Bonetti, Nunan and associate restorer Daniela Cocco carefully removed each rice paper square. Each section was cleaned, and then on to the next square. Although restoration doesn’t always mean that all of the dirt comes off, the colors are more vibrant, Bonetti said.“You can already see that,” he said about the parts that have been completed.At 1 p.m. on Sunday, Bonetti will give a talk about the restoration, and Robert Mattison, a professor of art history at Lafayette College, will speak about Kline’s art, the importance of it in the art world and the influence Lehighton on his work. Admission is free, but donations are welcome. For more information about the event, visit the museum’s website at

http://www.allentownartmuseum.org/calendar/upcoming-programs-and-events.