The distracting clank of shifting marble tiles on the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s second floor, a critical lack of exhibition space and the necessity of airlifting large works into buildings by crane were among the issues confronting a museum that opened in 1905.
With the renamed and reimagined Buffalo AKG Art Museum reopening Monday, they are now a thing of the past.
Roughly 430 works of art will be on exhibit in galleries that can accommodate almost anything an artist or curator can conjure, three times the amount previously on view.
A loading dock, freight elevators and a bridge can now transport artwork throughout the museum.
And that marble floor? It has been replaced by more durable red oak.
Creating new spaces to meet the museum’s needs in the 21st century, and pursuing new approaches to broaden and diversify its audience are all part of the museum’s $195 million expansion, restoration and renovation that began in January 2020, two months after the museum temporarily closed.
Museum Director Janne Sirén’s enthusiasm for the additional art that can be exhibited was evident late last week, as he gave a Buffalo News reporter an early tour of the buildings and grounds.
“The amazing Elaine de Kooning, no one has seen that work, ‘Scrimmage,’ “ Sirén said about the abstract and figurative artist’s 1953 work. “Or Ellsworth Kelly’s such an important work, ‘New York, NY,’ from 1957, acquired in 1959,” he said, gesturing to another. “That’s Ellsworth when he was back from Paris, becoming Ellsworth.”
The transformative museum project, steered by Sirén, a former paratrooper in the Finnish special forces who took the museum’s helm 10 years ago, is a stunning accomplishment. It adds to the prestige the museum has long brought to Buffalo and Western New York, and boosts the Buffalo AKG’s global reputation as one of the great repositories of modern and contemporary art.
The big addition is the three-story,…
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