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FeedStamps of approval for AKAG's Abstract Expressionists
I can say this with absolutely no irony: the excitement was palpable as the Abstract Expressionists Commemorative Stamp was officially unveiled and dedicated in the auditorium at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery this morning.
Presiding over the event, a well-structured and appropriately swift-moving affair, was David E. Failor, the U.S. Postal Services' Executive Director of Stamp Services. He noted that in the audience were several people (I suppose they are the philatelists' equivalent of "train-spotters" or old Grateful Dead fans) who follow his "stamp show" around the country, attending all and any stamp-related events they can.
Also in attendance was the head of a national first-day cover association (that's people who collect stamps on their first day of issue). Several members of the Knox family were there, as well as staff from the Ashton Potter printing company, one of the largest postage stamp printers in the country—coincidentally located right in Williamsville.
It is testament to the strength and importance of the Albright as an institution that of the ten paintings selected to be commemorated on the newly designed panel of ten 44-cent-stamps, four are in the Gallery's permanent collection. Art director Ethel Kessler and art historian Jonathan Fineberg selected the paintings. Kessler designed the pane upon which the stamps are featured.
It is a huge (and deserving) honor that the ceremony to reveal the stamps, in all their glory, was held at the Albright, extending Buffalo and the Albright's national reputation into the positive spotlight.
The artists featured on the stamps (listed in order of their birth) are Hans Hofmann, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Joan Mitchell. The Rothko, Gorky, Pollock, and Motherwell originals are the ones held by the Albright.
Said Albright chief curator Douglas Dreishpoon in his remarks, "Let us not forget that these works were not immediately popular," and that, while they were mostly made post-war, they carry many references to struggle and to difficult times; struggles, he says, that are still not necessarily resolved.
The proceedings were sweetly bookended by performances from local high school musical groups. First, a combined chorus of boys and girls from Amherst Central High, directed by Justin Pomietlarz, sang, and to close it out, Hutch Tech's Jazz Ensemble, directed by Ben Boyar, jammed a medley of abstract-inspired songs. In the spirit of spontaneous abstraction, Dreishpoon sat in on drums.
Louis Grachos, in his remarks, quoted the entirety of an email he received from a fellow museum head in New York City about the new stamps—"Super-cool"-—and it's a judgment with which I wholeheartedly agree.
