The six-month exhibition, "DoubleTake," will pair the Impressionist works with post-Impressionist ones. On display will be two dozen of Allen's paintings, many of which have not been seen publicly in 50 years.

"For the past 100 years, images by Impressionist masters like Monet and Renoir have so penetrated the cultural landscape that they've almost lost their meaning," curator Paul Hayes Tucker, an art history professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, said in a statement. "By pairing them side-by-side with great contemporary and modern works, we can cast a new light on these magnificent canvases and learn to see them in a new way."

For example, Tucker said he plans to pair Monet's "Rouen Cathedral: Afternoon Effect," painted in 1894, with Jasper Johns' "Numbers," painted in 1978. Though at first they appear to have little in common, upon closer inspection they show similar concerns with texture, relief, light and shade.

"EMP is a wonderful venue for this kind of show," said artistic director Robert Santelli. "'DoubleTake' is an exhibition all about unexpected pairings of art, and EMP as a cultural institution celebrates such creativity."

The exhibition, scheduled to open in April, will also include works by Mark Rothko and Roy Lichtenstein.

Tucker has previously served as a curator for Monet exhibits at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the Bridgestone Museum in Tokyo, among others.

The Experience Music Project, founded by Allen as an interactive museum of popular music history and memorabilia, has gone through a series of layoffs since its first full year of operation in 2001. Attendance was 800,000 that first year, but has since settled at around 400,000 annually - about the same as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.