“If you build it, they will come” could refer to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum since reopening in June with improvements to the entire campus, including a new three-story glass-and-marble edifice named for philanthropist Jeffrey Gundlach.
Paid attendance has topped 115,000 and is on pace to reach 251,909, more than double 2018, the last full year of operation prior to closing for the expansion project, a museum official said.
If that trajectory continues, it would be the most since the museum’s 1977-78 season 46 years ago, tracked in fiscal years, drew 303,858 patrons.
The museum also recently surpassed 10,000 memberships, the most since the museum started tracking that number in 1958, some 65 years ago.
Those numbers reinforce the positive reactions Buffalo AKG leaders regularly hear from visitors to the revamped museum.
“More than anything, I feel grateful,” Deputy Director Jillian Jones told The Buffalo News. “Grateful to the tens of thousands of visitors, grateful to our supporters near and far, and grateful beyond measure to our staff, who have worked tirelessly to bring the Buffalo AKG to life.”
Attendance isn’t showing signs of slowing down, with more than 2,000 visitors last Friday.
“There were people in every room we walked into,” said Jess Nichols of Colden, on her second visit to the museum in the past month and a half.
“We had been to this museum maybe a decade ago, and I thought it was pretty great back then and had a good collection, but this is really spectacular,” said Josue Hurtado, a Haddonfield, N.J., resident who visited the museum last week while in the region to see family in Williamsville.
“We heard good things about all the new construction …,” Hurtado said. “It was worth the visit for sure.”
A ribbon-cutting June 12 was followed by a week of free visits for the public, who waited through 3 1/2 years of construction to step back into the former Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The…
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