THE WAR AGAINST THE ALBRIGHT-KNOX

Thanks to Artvoice and Bruce Jackson for bringing sanity to Buffalo. “The War Against the Albright-Knox” (Artvoice v6n8) shed the light of day on the senseless attack on the museum. Everyone I know in the area has been delighted by the creative developments designed to bring art to the whole community—and the community to the arts. The Albright-Knox has been the brightest star in Buffalo for the past few years. The enthusiasm of the crowds at the Friday Gusto at the Gallery programs shows how hungry we are for thoughtful and stimulating entertainment in our region. Rather than thoughtless, silly complaints, the museum director deserves only our appreciation and respect for bringing the arts in Buffalo into a new era. Once again, Artvoice comes through as our primary source for sanity in the Buffalo print media.

David Myrow

Amherst

I’m writing this letter in support of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, as a way of showing my appreciation for what the museum does in our community. As a first year art history graduate student at the University at Buffalo, I view the gallery as a central focus of the Buffalo art community. One major reason I chose UB was for Buffalo’s reputation as a center of contemporary and modern art.

As an art history student, I generally have expectations about a museum. I expected to see a Jackson Pollock and an Andy Warhol, some Impressionist works and a special exhibit on my first visit. I never expected to walk in and see three works with ice hockey as their common subject. (These works—Malcolm Morley’s Goalie, a painting, Paul Pfeifer’s Caryatid, a video, and 50 Goal Season, a sculpture made of hockey sticks and pucks, were all on display earlier this year). I was excited and somewhat shocked to see these works. They were a remnant of the fervor caused by the Sabres bid in the Stanley Cup tournament last spring, but (to borrow a commonly asked question nowadays) “What the heck were they doing up in the gallery?” So I had to do my research and learn about each of the artists, only to find that they were each making a unique contribution to contemporary art, by using sports as a new subject of inquiry.

I tell this story often when I talk about the egalitarian effect of much contemporary art, which often strikes a sentimental chord. These works taught me that there is a different way to look at art. The competitive museum of today is conscientiously building and displaying their collection allowing them to play a more significant role in interpretation and art appreciation. The current exhibition of the permanent collection, aptly called “Remix,” does just that, ordering works thematically by form, color or texture, or by subject matter including the familiar: Americana, landscapes, social commentary, and the not so familiar: abstraction, music, minimalist narratives, disparate spaces, light and movement. This exhibition bridges new connections helping to teach basic elements of art appreciation, rather than ordering the works with an historical ruler. If you look at the introduction to any history of art textbook (e.g. Gardner’s or Janson’s), the discussion starts here, not with ancient art.

Instead of dwelling on what the gallery is losing, I hope that everyone will reexamine what the gallery is accomplishing right now, and what they can do in the future. Teaching and appreciating art is alive and well, just go to the gallery on a Friday evening (free!) or check out the great events they have planned. Sure, the youth of today will not have the same experience in the Gallery as their parents did 30 years ago, but they will get a well rounded and possibly more robust experience due to the Gallery’s efforts. This obsession with preserving the Gallery as a monument to time is only damaging the Gallery’s ability to promote art in a relevant and effective way by draining the museums precious resources: its staff and their time. The de-accession will allow the Gallery to better adapt to the Buffalo community through new acquisitions, and innovative and timely exhibitions, isn’t that worth celebrating?

Maureen Dugan

Buffalo

I would like to respond to the concerns voiced by Hispanics United of Buffalo in their letter “Preserving Hispanic Heritage,” (Artvoice v6n8) where they express opposition to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s decision to deaccession pre-Columbian art holdings.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is dedicated to exhibiting a diverse range of artists, including those from around the globe, all within its mission to acquire, exhibit, and preserve both modern and contemporary art. The gallery had the good fortune to acquire a number of important South American abstract works in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This acquisition was made many years before other institutions focused on the modernist works from this region.

The grandfather of abstraction in South America was Joaquin Torres-Garcia. At the age of 60 in 1934, he returned from Spain, Italy, and France to his hometown of Montevideo, Uruguay, to start the School of the South. He was determined to create a new visual identity for South America that combined the radical abstract compositions he had perfected with European masters with the native traditions of the Andean and pre-Inca civilizations. He incorporated the geometric symbols of these native cultures with signs of his own into the classic modernist gird. South American artists in general were attracted to abstraction in the period just before and after World War II. In this time of time of rapid industrialization, disentanglement from colonial powers, and intense nation building, abstraction offered artists a way to envision a new, independent identity. Committed to sharing these ideas, Torres-Garcia gave more than 600 lectures and wrote more than six books. The Albright-Knox owns two paintings and five artist books by this master. This work was shown recently in the exhibition Formal Exchange: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery and Latin America, February 17 to July 2, 2006. The exhibition also included a number of fantastic experimental works that question space, color, and perception by artists working in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, which mirror developments in minimalism and op art but with a feel that is entirely their own.

Artists from Latin countries are strongly represented in the gallery’s collection. There are the magical experimentations of Spaniard Joan Miró (14 works), the surrealist mindscapes of Chilean Roberto Matta (four works), the iconic portrait of Mexican Frida Kahlo, the regal, modern peasant scenes of Mexican Rufino Tamayo (four works), material abstractions of Spaniard Antoni Tàpies (nine works), and the telling paintings of architectural plans by Argentine Guillermo Kuitca. The gallery will present a retrospective of Kuitca’s work in 2009. More recently, the gallery has acquired and exhibited contemporary works by Ernesto Neto (Brazil), Angela de la Cruz (Spain), Teresita Fernández (Miami), Jorge Pardo (Cuba), and Arturo Herrera (Venezuela). At the top of the gallery’s wish list of contemporary acquisitions is Cuban-born artist Félix González-Torres.

The place of Latin American art in the cultural history of the world and in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s collection is important and vital. As the gallery continues to collect and present modern and contemporary art, this aspect of the collection will grow and become evermore rich.

Claire Schneider

Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Buffalo

The War against Carl Dennis

Bruce Jackson is right! How dare retired UB English professor and Pulitzer Prize winning poet Carl Dennis have the temerity to trade on the “gravitas the prize carries” to question the decision by the all knowing Albright-Knox Board of Directors to tell the Buffalo community what is best for us?

After all, according to Jackson, “UB has, in recent years, lost all its creative writers with international reputations: Robert Creeley and Leslie Fiedler died, Raymond Federman retired and went to California, MacArthur fellow Irving Feldman retired and disappeared and Charles Bernstein took another job. Carl Dennis and his Pulitzer are—even though Dennis is also retired—all that’s left.” How can Dennis trade on his honors to support his position?

Of course Jackson, whose every article in this publication is followed by the blurb…

“Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture at UB. In 2000, the French government named him to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest honor in the arts and humanities.” (Alas, there’s no mention of a Pulitzer Prize in the list.)

…would never think about trading on the “gravitas” of his position and honors to defend his “kvelling” and “futtering” about his retired colleague, Carl Dennis, and those other members of the UB English Department, as well as everyone else from the greater Western New York community of art lovers, who are trying to do the right thing by questioning the suspect methods used in the de-accessioning process.

Jackson’s unwarranted attack on Dennis seems like the work of Goody-Two-Shoes, however, compared to the vile character assassination in an original piece by John Massier, “Why does Joseph Pulitzer look so #%*ing depressed,” that Jackson posted on his buffaloreport.com Web site. Massier writes: “I say the following without malice, since I don’t know the man: every word I heard Carl Dennis speak dripped of deluded insincerity. Or should that be sincere delusion? Or maybe just crapola?” From there, it just gets nastier. Massier then goes on to refer to Jackson as “My new hero.” What could Carl Dennis have possibly done, if anything, to Bruce Jackson to generate this level of hatred?

Jackson is himself a publicly exhibited artist, so presumably he knows a lot more about these matters than a mere poet like Dennis. Jackson asserts that: “This vendetta has already done real harm to the Albright-Knox. Some potential donors who see these unfounded accusations about the motives and ethics of the directors will believe them and the gallery will not receive support it would (and should) otherwise have received.”

To correct this potentially sad development, Jackson might lead by example, and contribute his photographic works from last years’ Bridge Perspectives exhibit at the Historical Society of Western New York to what could become a newly created “Donated/Instantly De-accessioned” fund at the Albright. He might convince other local artists to do their part to help provide funds for the Gallery’s acquisition of new, expensive, cutting edge artwork. The money raised from the sale of Jackson’s pieces would, no doubt, pay for, say a dinner plate by Judy Chicago (or at least a small chip of a plate), or at the very least, five or ten seconds of a cutting edge video installation. Hey, at least it’s a start.

Every cloud has a silver lining department: For every collegial relationship that wilts (Dennis/Jackson), a new one blooms. Bruce Jackson has long been a harsh critic of Buffalo News Award-Winning-Writer Jeff Simon (see Jackson’s buffaloreport.com feature article: “Why did Jeff Simon stick it to Leslie Fiedler?” 7/19/02). So it’s both heart-warming, and at the same time downright scary, to see the two most tirelessly self-regarding cinema/cultural/cosmic critics in Buffalo, if not in Western New York, for once on the same side, albeit the wrong side, in the sorry art deaccessioning controversy. This new-found solidarity between the film guys calls to mind, appropriately enough, the final line from the classic movie, Casablanca: “Jeff, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Jan Jezioro

Buffalo