Dr. Rudy S. Ackerman's career as an arts educator and artist has touched the lives of countless art students, artists, art educators and arts aficionados across the Lehigh Valley.

He has been a Pied Piper, a Johnny Appleseed, a cheerleader on the Valley arts scene for half a century.

Ackerman's career extends from teaching art to elementary school students, to establishing an art department at Moravian College, to building a new Baum School of Art, to having his own art studio in Florence, Italy, to hanging out with Harry Bertoia, one of his influences.

Ackerman is being honored Oct. 18 at the annual Baum School of Arts gala. Ackerman and others will speak at the dinner fundraiser held at Baum. (Information: baumschool.org, 610-433-0032).

His passion for the arts hasn't waned. Ackerman has maintained an improvisational approach, singular determination and performance outcome orientation to art education and his own art work emblematic of his jazz musician roots.

Like a jazz musician who plays between the notes, a youngster who colors outside the lines or an administrator who thinks outside the box, Ackerman pushed the boundaries in his art and the arts institutions he's served.

It all began in 1958 in the Southern Lehigh School District where Ackerman was hired right out of Kutztown University to teach Lower Milford, Center Valley, Lanark and Coopersburg elementary schools students.

"What I was hired to do was visit classrooms every week and teach a class. What I decided to do was have enrichment for kids who seemed to have ability.

"I never wanted an art room. My art room is the classroom."

Ackerman also offered summer art enrichment classes in the Solehi district. "I was there for five years. They were marvelous years."

In the Army

Music, not art, was the focus for Ackerman, William Allen High School, Class of 1951, where he was student director of the marching band directed by the legendary Albertus E. Meyers. Ackerman played E-flat clarinet. "It is almost like a flute. So, I could play my own little solos as we were marching along."

While an 11th grader at Allen, Ackerman played tenor sax in the Bud Rader Band, a 16-piece big band. One of the other popular area big bands at the time was the Matt Gillespie Band.

"I worked in nightclubs for two years after high school. Because my whole life was music."

Ackerman played six nights a week at Tallman's cafe, Ninth and Hamilton streets, across from Hess's department store. "Standing room only. It was mobbed." He also went on the road with the house band, The Tallmanaires.

In 1953, Ackerman was drafted. "I was shipped to Georgia, which I found frightening. You know, I'd rather go to New Jersey." Ackerman trained in the Army Signal Corps, "throwing hand grenades and all that."

After arriving on base, he was asked to report to headquarters. "They had a saxophone and a clarinet. And I could play them both. Sometimes, you can't depend on the reeds. It turned out that God must have prepared the reeds."

Ackerman was told, "'You're in a show tonight.' They knew I could improvise. I didn't need music." It was Ackerman on sax and musicians on trumpet, guitar, piano and drums. "I didn't even have all my hair. I had just got it cut. My uniform wasn't fitting right. I was only in the Army a few days."

Soon, Ackerman was in Special Services, playing in a Dixieland Band, entertaining the troops, and winning an All-Army Show.

Ackerman and Rose Ercolani had been engaged. They got married. She moved to Georgia where he served 1953 - '55.

After the Army, "I didn't want to play in nightclubs anymore. I wanted to find another life.

"As a kid, I went to the Baum School. I had been a shop boy in high school." Ackerman was encouraged to go to college. "How would a guy who took open-book spelling contests could go to college?

"I made up my mind I would get through in three years. I just loved the art education department. Some semesters, I didn't even have time to eat. I dedicated myself to that."

He received a BS in Arts Education from Kutztown University and it was off to then rural Southern Lehigh as a circuit-riding art teacher 1958 -'62.

At Moravian

A Ford Foundation grant facilitated Ackerman's receiving a Masters in Arts Education from Temple University. "That opened the door to teach at college."

He became a professor of art at Moravian College. "There weren't any others in the department, except me. I said this will be a large department in many years.

"I came in as chair. I taught every course: metalsmithing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, drawing. Each one of those became a course with a teacher.

"All of this took place in the same room [now Payne Gallery]. It became a marvelous studio."

Moravian's Priscilla Payne Hurt Campus, Main and Church streets, was expanded, with historic buildings restored and new facilities built for art and music education, as well as Foy Concert Hall.

Ackerman chaired Moravian's art department 1963 - 2002, continuing as a part-time art instructor until 2006. He estimates 700 on the Moravian College art department alumni list during his tenure there.

"When I went there, they asked me if I was going to go for a doctorate." His dissertation topic was art student education, motivation and evaluation. "I had never used a computer before. And in those days, you had to punch cards. There may have been thousands of them."

Ackerman received a doctorate in education from The Pennsylvania State University.

While at Moravian, Ackerman led the stage band, The Brethren.

He also developed the Moravian Jan Term (January Term) semester abroad, with he and his wife, Rose, annually leading student groups to Europe for research and instruction.

The Baum years

Ackerman was asked to become director of the Baum School of Art. He spoke with Dr. James J. Heller, then Moravian dean. "He saw the value ... in the benefits of being connected.

"What became the benefit [was] I was able to create a large faculty at both schools. It also attracted students both ways. It had tremendous benefits.

"It also had wonderful benefits for both, financially." Priscilla Payne Hurd, Linny Fowler, plus the major corporations, like Air Products, provided funding for both institutions.

When Ackerman became executive director of Baum in 1965, the school was at the southwest corner of 12th and Walnut streets, Allentown. Space was limited.

"Bernie Berman [then Hess's owner and an arts benefactor] came up with the idea: 'The museum is building an addition. Why don't you join us and be in the lower level of the museum?'"

A fund drive raised $75,000 and the Baum School relocated to the Allentown Art Museum, Fifth and Court streets, Allentown, 1976 - '87.

"That's when I started talking with Donald Miller [Morning Call publisher], who donated a parking lot on the southwest corner of Fifth and Linden streets, Allentown. Funding totaled $750,000. The Baum Art School facility, since added onto in 2001, was built.

Ackerman retired as Baum executive director in 2005, to become director of exhibitions and collections.

"Living The Dream"

The book, "Living The Dream," written by Ackerman and edited by Tim Higgins, is expected to be available for order at the Baum benefit. The 85-page publication will include 30 photographs relating to the Bum School. Book sales proceeds go to the school. "I derive nothing, but innumerable amounts of fame. It's a personal story."

The exhibition, "Full Circle: Rudy S. Ackerman, A Retrospective," with 50 prints and sculpture, continues through Oct. 18, The David E. Rodale and Rodale Family Galleries, The Baum School of Art, 510 Linden St., Allentown. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. - 9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday; 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. Saturday.

"The art grew out of the music. I started out by doing landscapes. I needed something more. I just didn't feel it's where I wanted to go."

Ackerman was influenced by Pennsylvania Impressionist painters, including Walter Baum, fabled founder of the Baum School with whom he studied, and Jackson Pollock, the art world wild man of splattered paint canvases.

"I got caught between the two. I've been able to sell a lot of work. But I didn't have to do it for a living. I was able to do what I wanted to do. That's the marvelous part.

"I could be sitting in a village in Italy. I was so intrigued that I started doing sketches. It's a matter of experimentation. If the experimentation isn't there, I don't enjoy it. That's why the metal has been so much fun. There is the influence of Harry Bertoia, who I knew and loved.

"The work that's in the Baum School now were mostly done in Italy. We traveled abroad. We took students [to] Greece, Italy, Egypt, France, German, Austria, England, Holland, Spain.

"We had a wonderful time, in Rome and Venice, with Rose's ideas of fashion. We had an apartment in Florence. I worked in a studio there and Rose worked in fashion.

"We've been very fortunate."

The Ackemans have a daughter, Sally King, a Philadelphia lawyer, who has two children, Matthew, a McGill University student, and Maria, an 11th grade student, and a daughter, Ann Lalik, Director, Ronald K. DeLong Gallery, Pennsylvania State University Lehigh Valley, who has two sons, Alex, and Nick, both Temple University graduates.

The list of Ackerman's accolades and accomplishments is too long to be encapsulated in any one tribute, but suffice it to say it spans the Lehigh Valley and beyond.

In 2004, the Allentown Arts Commission chose Ackerman as recipient of its Overall Arts Ovation Award.

Ackerman and his wife, Rose, Baum director of development 2004 - '11 and previously director of special operations and events there, were honored for five decades of commitment to teaching art, especially to disadvantaged children; for transforming the Baum School of Art from an educational center into an arts incubator; and for improving academics, business and architecture in Allentown.

Even Ackerman's first name has roots in music roots. It's not a nickname for Rudolph.

"My father, Harvey, a sax player, liked the sax player, Rudy Wiedoff. My mother, Alma, loved Rudolph Valentino. My father said he would not live in a house with a Rudolph. It [the name Rudy] was a little strange for that time because in the 1930s, people didn't do that. Dad worked for the city in engineering. And he was a fine musician.

"There's generations [of Ackermans] who were in the Pioneer Band, including me."