A question of definition By Elizabeth Licata “Can this be Buffalo?” was the headline of a Life magazine article in 1968. Its incredulous tone was prompted by the second edition of Buffalo’s Festival of the Arts: an explosion of contemporary visual art, music, and dance that drew international attention to the rich avant garde arts scene then thriving in the Queen City. One of the crown jewels of this scene was the recently-titled Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which was then in the heyday of its acquisitions of abstract expressionism, pop art, op art, and minimalist masterpieces. It had also been totally transformed by a dramatic glass and marble addition to the building, designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft. As is now legendary, Albright-Knox director Gordon Smith and Seymour H. Knox, Jr. together chose and acquired a powerhouse collection of modern and contemporary art between 1955 and 1973. It was then that works by Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Joan Miro—to name just a few—entered the collection. It was thanks to their judgment that the Albright-Knox leaped from its minor status as a very nice museum with a highly regarded collection to international renown as a modern and contemporary art must-see. I started visiting the museum in 1975, two years after Smith ended his tenure as director. As a Buffalo State student, I spent my breaks between classes wandering the museum, sometimes sitting in a gallery reading. The museum I saw—and loved—was the museum of Smith and Knox, a treasury of awe-inspiring, challenging, audacious works of modern and contemporary art. There were also hallways filled with stellar examples of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, paintings that provoked just as much confusion and indignation in their day as abstract works by Pollock and Gorky were to suffer in the next century. Thirty years after my first visit, I have been attending exhibitions and events at the Albright-Knox with renewed pleasure, as the new director and curators present the most ambitious series of programming I have ever seen. To say that it is an exciting place seems almost an understatement. Recently, there has been considerable controversy surrounding the Albright-Knox’s decision to sell a group of antiquities in order to stabilize the museum’s fund to buy modern and contemporary art. There is much I find puzzling about this uproar, but one thing stands out in particular. I don’t know what museum those upset about the sale are talking about. I have never been to the fictional Albright-Knox described in angry letters to the editor and guest editorials. I have never noticed a focus on anything other than modern and contemporary art and I never went to the museum to look at antiquities. I’m not sure I ever noticed antiquities on display, although I have enjoyed visiting such collections at museums whose mission is to show the entire history of art, from prehistory to the present. The Albright-Knox has never had the space or the resources to show ancient artifacts in the context they deserve; indeed, such a context is needed, for educational purposes. When I hear people bemoan the loss of a small number of objects that are rarely shown and not vital to the museum’s mission, I have to wonder which Albright-Knox they’re talking about. It can’t be the museum I know, the museum that has provided Western New Yorkers with one of the most exciting collections of modern and contemporary art in the world. “Can this be Buffalo?” Yes. But only if Buffalonians are willing to move forward. Only if they are willing to accept change that improves both our city and its institutions. And only if they are willing to recognize a magnificent cultural asset for what it is—not for what it can never, and should never be. Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top