The Albright–Knox Art Gallery is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. As of September 2021, the Albright-Knox’s Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosts exhibitions and events at Albright-Knox Northland, a project space at 612 Northland Avenue in Buffalo’s Northland Corridor. The new Buffalo Albright Knox Gundlach Art Museum (AKG) is expected to open in 2022. The gallery is a central showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is directly opposite Buffalo State College and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
History
The parent organization of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery is the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, founded in 1862, one of the oldest public arts institutions in the United States. On January 15, 1900, Buffalo entrepreneur and philanthropist John J. Albright, a wealthy Buffalo industrialist, donated funds to the Academy to begin the construction of an art gallery. Prominent local architect Edward Brodhead Green designed the building. It was initially intended to be used as the Fine Arts Pavilion for the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, but delays in its construction caused it to remain uncompleted until 1905. When it finally opened its doors on May 31, 1905, it was named the Albright Art Gallery.
Clifton Hall, the third building on the museum’s campus, was constructed in 1920 by the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences. Today, Clifton Hall houses the F. Paul Norton and Frederic P. Norton Family Prints And Drawings Study Center, the AK Innovation Lab, and the Public Art Initiative are working spaces and staff offices. Bed Bug Exterminator Buffalo
Collection
The Albright–Knox Art Gallery has long operated not by collecting artists’ work in depth but by trying to acquire critical positions. The gallery’s collection includes several pieces spanning art throughout the centuries. Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic styles can be found in works by artists of the nineteenth century, such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.
Revolutionary styles from the early twentieth century, such as cubism, surrealism, and constructivism, are represented in works by artists like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, and Henri Matisse, and André Derain, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and Alexander Rodchenko. Frida Kahlo is represented by Self-Portrait with Monkey. Because of Seymour H. Knox and Gordon M. Smith, a former director, the Albright-Knox was one of the first museums to collect Abstract Expressionism in depth.
More modern pieces showing styles of abstract expressionism, pop art, and art of the 1970s through the end of the century can also be represented by artists such as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, and Andy Warhol. Additionally, the gallery is also rich in various pieces of post-war American and European art; their contemporary collection includes pieces by artists such as Kiki Smith, Allan Graham, Georg Baselitz, John Connell, and Per Kirkeby. The museum bought Anselm Kiefer’s large-scale Die Milchstrasse (The Milkyway) (1985–1987) in 1988 to celebrate its 125th anniversary.
Address: 1285 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo, NY
Check out other attractions like Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens