Beyond it, the 1905 building stood like a proud parent, attached by the umbilical cord of a curving bridge. Last summer, as I drove on the Scajaquada Expressway to visit the site, the three-storey, geometric building suddenly loomed into view on my left. Instead, the new addition is a standalone building located where a parking lot once stood. During the architecture competition, he told the five finalists: ‘We will ask you to flex your design muscle, but we’re probably not going to build anything you propose, because we’re looking for partners.’ The winner was OMA with the New York office’s Shohei Shigematsu as the partner in charge, for a proposal to build an extension over the Bunshaft courtyard (with executive architects Cooper Robertson), and the humility to throw it away. ‘Museums can be many things, but they have to be of, and for, the community.’ He held nine months of town hall meetings, and found that people supported an expansion as long as it did not encroach on the park. ‘Many people appreciate the Albright-Knox in a castle-on-the-hill way, like, “it’s not my museum”,’ he says. Buffalo has a nearly 30 per cent poverty rate, and he wanted to involve the local community in the process. But when Sirén was hired, he took a step back. In 2012, the museum asked Snøhetta to draw up a master plan for a new addition. ![]() The Albright-Knox even lacked a loading dock – Sirén says a crane would hoist larger artworks to an opening in the side of the building: ‘There are pictures of Pollocks literally flying through the air, with four art handlers holding the ropes so they don’t fling too much!’ Art itself was changing, becoming bigger. (At one point, Sirén had a Cézanne and a Monet hanging in his office.) By the turn of this century, the Bunshaft addition no longer met conservation standards or ADA regulations. Renamed the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (after two philanthropists who donated generously to the institution), the museum tripled its collection between 19, again overwhelming the space. To display its acquisitions, the museum commissioned Buffalo native Gordon Bunshaft to design a sleek, modernist glass box with an auditorium in 1962. ‘Or, as the saying goes, “when the paint is still wet”.’ From 1938 onwards, under Seymour H Knox Jr and Gordon M Smith, the museum built up its holdings hungrily and intelligently, acquiring masterpieces by the likes of Matisse, Pollock, Rothko, Bacon, de Kooning and Warhol, and amassing one of the world’s top collections of abstract expressionism, pop art and minimalism. ‘That became a boost to the original DNA of “we live with our times”,’ notes current director Janne Sirén, poached from the Helsinki Art Museum in 2013. In 1939, Goodyear established the Room of Contemporary Art. ![]() Several visionaries helped make the museum great, including Anson Conger Goodyear, who pushed for the acquisition in 1926 of Picasso’s La Toilette (its nudity temporarily cost him his place on the board). Architect Edward Brodhead Green designed its first permanent building, a Greek Revivalist structure inaugurated in 1905, on the edge of the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Delaware Park. The sixth-oldest museum in the United States, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery was established in 1862 as the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy to showcase the art of its day. Now, Buffalo is experiencing a long-awaited rebirth, along with a stunning overhaul for this gem of a cultural institution. But it had a glorious past as one of America’s most prosperous cities, and an exceptional legacy of art and architecture, including the world-renowned Albright-Knox Art Gallery. When I was growing up in Buffalo, New York, it was in a decades-long post-industrial slump, and known mainly for chicken wings, act-of-God blizzards, and a beloved, often heartbreaking football team. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions (opens in new tab) and Privacy Policy (opens in new tab) and are aged 16 or over.
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