ArtsBeat
The Albright ends its role as retailer
On Oct. 31, after 76 years of continuous operation, Buffalo’s oldest commercial art gallery will close its doors.
Closing the Collectors Gallery, a fixture within the hallowed halls of the Albright- Knox Art Gallery, is the latest in a series of significant cuts the gallery has made to narrow its focus and stay afloat in an unfriendly economy.
The announcement came without fanfare or press conferences, and with no loud lamentations from the public. But it marks the bittersweet end of a longstanding Buffalo institution.
On the one hand, the city’s artists are losing one their most auspicious exhibition spaces, and the streams of income and recognition that come with it. But the action comes at a time when appreciation for the work of Western New York artists is on a huge upward swing. With the proliferation of dozens of local galleries and the major addition of the locally focused Burchfield Penney Art Center, the loss of one commercial gallery isn’t nearly as devastating as it once might have been.
The gallery was launched in 1933 as an art rental house called “The Picture Lending Library,” a place where corporate entities and society women alike could satisfy their need for temporary visual flair. It evolved into a volunteer-run commercial exhibition space, which came to be revered by local artists who salivated over the opportunity to show their work in such close proximity to Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. For artists toiling away in local studios, the Albright-Knox imprimatur – official or not –was a source of exposure, respect and, most importantly, income.
And some local artists, understandably enough, aren’t thrilled with the gallery’s decision to shutter the space. For Patrick Willett, a local watercolorist and photographer, the loss of the gallery means, above all, a loss of potentially international recognition.
“The gallery is a public institution, and I think it should have more of a connection to the region that it resides in,” Willett said. “If you get in a little gallery in Allentown, that’s good, that’s great, but it’s not anywhere near the international connection that could happen from being at the Albright at any level, whether it’s the Collectors Gallery or the Western New
York show.”
But the Albright-Knox’s counterargument is convincing. Director Louis Grachos has touted the Albright- Knox’s major role in organizing the “Beyond/In Western New York” biennial exhibition, which launched in 2005, repeated with great success in 2007 and will have its third and most ambitious version yet next year. “Beyond/In,” highly selective though it is, has arguably garnered more attention for the work of local artists than any single gallery.
Since Grachos began his tenure in 2003, the gallery has stepped up its acquisition of local artists’ work, including pieces by Bruce Adams, Katherine Sehr, Julian Montague, Peter Stephens, Rodney Taylor, former News critic Richard Huntington and Ani Hoover, among others.
The Collectors Gallery closure also speaks to a trend that has been intensifying at the Albright-Knox for the past several years.
The gallery’s current board and administration, in a series of moves some applaud for their prudence and foresight and others bemoan for the lack of same, have been slowly and systematically focusing the gallery on its mission: “To acquire, exhibit and preserve both modern and contemporary art.”
Notice that the word “sell” doesn’t appear. Nor, some would argue, should it have anything to do with the operations of an internationally focused and accredited art museum.
Those moves began famously with the hotly contested 2007 auctions of more than 200 pieces from the gallery’s collection and continued with the elimination of Wednesday hours and the cutting of staff hours.
At a time when other arts groups with management troubles (the extinct Studio Arena Theatre, the imperiled Arts Council of Buffalo and Erie County) have been struggling to stay afloat, this painful move speaks volumes about the Albright-Knox’s laser-focused commitment to its mission.
For individual artists, now with one less gallery among many in which to show their work, the end of the Collectors Gallery stings. But if the upswing is an internationally respected gallery now able to concentrate more intently on what it does best, that sting will surely wear off in time.
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