Buffalo AKG Art Museum: A Rust Belt Revival

You don’t have to be convinced that Buffalo is a tourist hub, or even a haven of youthful creativity, to be intrigued by the story of the Buffalo AKG. The city’s world-renowned art museum has now completed a $230 million The expansion was designed by a Japanese architect, largely financed by a Los Angeles “bond king,” and overseen by a Finnish film director who happens to be the great-grandson of that country’s most famous artist. Meanwhile, the Buffalo AKG is opening a retrospective of Marisola Venezuelan pop artist who was once as famous as Andy Warhol before falling into obscurity and finally bequeathing his entire estate to the museum upon his death in 2016.

Director Janne Siren was hired in 2013 to execute a strategic plan for the museum that had actually been developed a decade earlier, shortly after the Buffalo AKG had lines around the block for a major exhibition of Monet of the Marmottan Museum in Paris. At the time, Siren was an early advocate for his institution’s place in the city’s cultural life, supported by the city’s elite but deeply engaged in the community. The fact that Buffalo AKG already houses landmark works of art by Frida Kahlo, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Adolphe Gottlieb, Jasper Johns, Larry PoonsAnd Robert MotherwellThe museum was essential, Siren said, because “we live in the most visual century there is.”