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Buffalo AKG Art Museum

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The sixth oldest public art museum in the United States, for more than 150 years the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly Albright-Knox Art Gallery) has collected, conserved, and exhibited the art of its time, often working directly with living artists. This tradition has given rise to one of the world’s most extraordinary collections of modern and contemporary art.

Driven to radically expand its accessibility and engagement with its local and global community and inspired by the world-class caliber of its collection, in November 2019, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum broke ground on the most significant campus expansion and development project in the museum’s 160-year history.

Designed by OMA/Shohei Shigematsu with substantial input from communities throughout Western New York and the museum’s leadership steered by Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director Dr. Janne Sirén, the new Buffalo AKG comprises more than 50,000 square feet of state-of-the art exhibition space, five classrooms, an interior community gathering space, and more than half an acre of new public green space.

The expanded campus is situated at the edge of Buffalo’s Delaware Park, designed by America’s foremost landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. Its original main buildings — one neoclassical and one modern — were designed by celebrated American architects Edward B. Green and Gordon Bunshaft.

The museum’s collections span some of the greatest moments in modern and contemporary art, beginning with its first acquisition, The Marina Piccola, Capri, 1859, by Albert Bierstadt — both the first painting and the first work gifted by an artist to enter the museum’s collection.

The collection is especially rich in postwar American and European art. Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, and Op Art are represented with exceptional works from Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Jasper Johns, Franz Kline, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Bridget Riley, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, and many others. The museum holds the world’s second largest collection of works by the Abstract Expressionist painter Clyfford Still, with 33 paintings (31 of which were gifted by the artist). It is also the world's largest repository of the work of Marisol, who bequeathed her estate, including more than 100 sculptures, to the museum in 2016.

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum continues to add to this collection, and seeks to represent the most important voices in contemporary art of the 21st century. These additions to the collection ensure that future generations will continue to discover the incredible diversity of art during visits to this American treasure.

To plan your visit and see what works are currently on view, please visit the museum’s website.