Buffalo AKG included in TIME’s ranking of the most beautiful places in the world in 2024

Buffalo, New York (WBEN) – The Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly known as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) has received a new honor that it hopes will attract even more visitors from around the world.

The museum was one of 100 locations included in TIME“The World’s Greatest Places of 2024,” a significant and distinct honor for the museum, which recently underwent a major rebranding and renovation project.

“We’re extremely excited about it,” Andrew Mayer, the museum’s marketing and media relations manager, said in an interview with WBEN Friday.

“The staff is very excited. It’s been a lot of work over the last ten years to get to this point where we’re open as Buffalo AKG. But we’re also excited about what this means for the city of Buffalo. It has the potential to attract a lot of people to this area.”

And the museum has already generated a lot of interest since reopening in June 2023. In its first year of operation as Buffalo AKG, the museum welcomed approximately 325,000 visitors, breaking a 50-year attendance record.

Visit Buffalo Niagara has been a strong promoter of the museum, bringing travel writers to the city to write about what Buffalo has to offer.

“We’ve been working with the author who wrote this segment for over a year, we brought her to Buffalo. She was part of a tour we did last year for several different authors,” Patrick Kaler, president and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara, told WBEN.

“What’s also interesting about this article is that it mentions the Richardson Hotel, the Richardson Homestead campus and the West Side Bazaar. So it really gets people thinking about Buffalo as a destination that’s rich with things to see and do.”

Kaler describes the Buffalo AKG as “the launching pad” for those who want to come to the city of good neighbors for an arts and culture experience. He notes that there’s always something going on at the museum, with new exhibits arriving regularly, concerts and great food.

“It’s more than just art. They have the Lego experience to attract families, the sky area is free, people can also have a free experience within the Buffalo AKG,” Kaler said.

“The cafe has a fantastic chef who creates wonderful food. You can also get a picnic basket so you can have an experience on the lawn during their live music on the weekends. So it’s really a totally immersive experience and you can go multiple times, even as a Buffalo and Erie County resident, you can continue to go just to have these different experiences and the ever-changing exhibits that they have as well.”

“We hear all the time from people walking through the galleries and they’re shocked by the strength of our collection, the works that we have,” Mayer adds. “It seems like every time we walk into a new gallery with them, they say, ‘Oh my God, you have that too.’ So it’s nice to see how that understanding has seeped into a broader understanding of what’s in the Buffalo AKG. It’s become a draw for people all over the world, we’ve had visitors in the last 12 months from all 50 states and many countries around the world.”