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PENNSBURG, PENN. – The new Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center will present a groundbreaking exhibit of Fraktur, to celebrate the completion of its new facility in May. Of the 83-plus works included, at least 80 have never been shown in an interpretive public exhibit.

The exhibit, “Fraktur Treasures from the Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center” – which opens May 21 and closes September 30 – will also show select works from the Heritage Center’s permanent collection of approximately 1,000 pieces of Fraktur. Until now the collection, one of the finest in the United States, had been known only to scholars and Fraktur aficionados.

Works in this milestone exhibit will include all forms of Fraktur: Vorschriften (religious messages or writing exercises for students from schoolmasters), Taufschein (birth and baptism certificates), marriage blessings, book plates, and folk art drawings. The works represent Schwenkfelder artists, as well as artists from neighboring Berks, Bucks and Lehigh counties. Works by Andreas Kolb, John Adam Eyer, Durs Rudie, and members of the Kriebel dan Heenber families will be shown.

Debbie Rebuck, curator of collections for the Dietrich American Foundation, based at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is serving as guest curator. Rebuck developed several traveling exhibitions of the Dietrich American Foundation’s Fraktur collection that have been shown at Williamsburg’s Abby Aldrich, Rockefeller Museum, among other venues in the United States.

Sponsored by the Robert Krieble Family and the Pennsylvanian Historical and Museum Commission, “Fraktur Treasures” will travel to other museums and cities: one of the exhibit’s hosts will be the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City.

The Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center is at 105 Seminary Street. Telephone, 215-679-3103.