In 1861, the Association decided to arrange an exhibition of paintings and, on December 31, 1861, the Fine Arts Committee held Buffalo’s first “regular” art exhibition in American Hall.  The space had been transformed into an art gallery, and the hall was “strewn with a collection of works of art” assembled locally and from out of town.  Committee chairman Edward Rich “gave a modest spread in the hall, to which eighty ladies and gentlemen were privately invited.  They came, admired the pictures, tasted the sandwiches and punch and voted the art exhibition a success, and so it proved.”  Over 260 paintings and eight works of statuary were exhibited.  The exhibition grossed $835.00, of which $350.00 was set aside to acquire a landscape painting for the association.

Success of the venture encouraged formation of a “society of permanent character” to take over the mission.  Influential citizens joined Sellstedt and local painter Thomas LeClear.  Incorporators of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy included Millard Fillmore, Orasmus Marshall, William Dorsheimer, William G. Fargo and other leading citizens.  The Academy members “believed in art as a necessary part of advanced culture.”  They declared their mission that “Buffalo is to have a permanent Art Gallery at once; and as soon as possible a free one.  This is a settled and invincible fact.” At the time, the only American cities with permanent art galleries were Boston and Philadelphia.

In the years that followed, the academy made moves to several rented locations for its exhibitions: in the Arcade Block (on the site of the Brisbane Building), the YMCA Building at Main and Eagle Streets, the Austin (First Unitarian Church) Building at Franklin and Eagle Streets, and the Buffalo Library on Washington Street, facing Lafayette Square.  During this period, the academy also established an art school, which attracted wide interest.

As the century ended, Buffalo was consumed by frenzied efforts to meet planning and construction deadlines for staging the Pan American Exposition, scheduled to open in May 1901. A 350-acre site was chosen for the exposition, of which 133 acres were part of Delaware Park.  The park’s designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, vehemently opposed any intrusion of buildings within the park, and insisted that any improvements built be subordinated to the natural landscape.  Notwithstanding Olmsted’s views and commitment from exposition owners to restore all parkland after the fair, the State Legislature in 1897 passed a law permitting construction of a permanent state pavilion within the park and its subsequent transfer to the Buffalo Historical Society.

John Olmsted, who had succeeded his father as head of the firm, wrote a letter to the city expressing strong objections to the proposed intrusion.  The Buffalo Parks Commission took up the proposal, and one of the commissioners proposed that the Olmsted firm be consulted.  However, that suggestion was rejected and the building was approved after the commission chairman opined that Olmsted’s objections were “silly.”

During work on the pavilion and the subsequently approved art gallery, however, the city encountered problems with site grading and access and reached out to the Olmsted firm for guidance.  Olmsted refused to participate.  After further interchanges, it is reported that Olmsted was notified that, unless help was forthcoming, they should expect no further work from the city.  Although their relationship was somewhat strained, Olmsted did consult with local architects and the problems were resolved.

As envisioned by exposition planners, American artistic achievement would be showcased through its architecture sculpture throughout the grounds.  In a June 1900 article in The New York Times chronicling progress of the exposition, the writer noted a glaring omission that “Neither at [the] Philadelphia [Centennial Exposition] in 1876 nor at [the] Chicago [World’s Fair] in 1903 was American art adequately or properly represented.”  He went on to suggest that the exposition could be an ideal opportunity to showcase “the entire field of painting in the United States during the century just ended,” with emphasis on the work of artists “who have not been content to echo some European strain.”

On January 15, 1900, the academy’s executive board met in the Buffalo Club to consider how to introduce fine art to the Pan American Exposition.  The board was delighted to hear the announcement by industrialist and academy patron John J. Albright of his plans to give the academy a permanent home in “a suitable building to cost no less than $350,000.”  The board accepted his offer and voted unanimously to honor their benefactor by naming the new building “The Albright Art Gallery.” In April, an act of the State Legislature took effect authorizing the City of Buffalo “to set apart to the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. . . sufficient land for the construction thereupon of a permanent art building.”  

Albright specified that the building should be set apart from other buildings that “might impair the effect of the structure.”   He also insisted that the best materials, including the finest white marble, be used in construction.  On his recommendation, Buffalo architect Edward B. Green, of the firm of Green & Wicks, was commissioned to design the building, which Green promised would be “the finest example of pure Greek architecture to be found in America.”   Green borrowed his main design elements from the Erechtheion temple on the Acropolis, widely regarded to be one of the foremost examples of the High Ionic style.  The building would be 250 feet wide by 150 feet in depth, with 74 free-standing columns forming porticoes, a hemicycle and loggia.  The columns were fashioned with a slightly convex profile, which eliminates the “parallax” illusion of parallel lines converging, so that from a distance the columns appear straight (a technique known as “entasis”).  The structure featured a central, sky-lit sculpture court opening on to easily accessible, eminating connecting corridors and maximizing space available for exhibition.  To complete the design scheme of the Erechtheion, Albright commissioned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to design eight figures to stand at the east façade of the Gallery.  These are caryatids, or korai, which historian Austin Fox described as “stately, emotionless classical ladies of uncertain age.” which seem to hold the entablature and roof effortlessly on their heads.   The commission is reported to have been around $100,000.  Four figures hold up each portico for a total of eight: the outer figures are the identical; the four interior figures (two for each portico) represent the arts of architecture (holding a capital), music (holding a lyre), sculpture (holding a nike) and painting (holding a palette and brushes). 

Implementation of Green’s design called for 5,000 tons of marble. A Maryland quarry, which had also supplied marble for the Washington Monument, was selected as the source.  While extracting the stone, workers struck a vein of discolored marble, requiring excavation of new layer.  The resulting delay in producing the marble made timely completion of the building impossible.  The building might have been finished on time if a different grade of marble were substituted; however, Albright insisted on adherence to the original specifications.

Inability to present the fine arts exhibit in the new building—which promised to be one of the more popular attractions of the exposition—caused considerable concern.  The city proposed that, “a temporary abode of the pictures would be built in the park as near the Albright Gallery as possible.” They had in mind a wood-frame building.  John Albright stepped forward to fund a temporary, fireproof brick and steel building.  With a frontage of 221 feet and depth of 106 feet, the temporary building would contain the same amount of exhibit space as the planned building and the interior space would replicate its floor plan, so that there would be no need to make any changes to the exhibition as planned.  E.B. Green designed the temporary structure, which was located on a site to the west of Delaware Avenue, between Nottingham Terrace and the current Scadjaquada Expressway, approximately where the McMillan Tennis Courts now stand.

Saint-Gaudens’ studio set to work on the caryatid figures, carving each weighing six tons.  Six of the figures were completed during Saint-Gaudens’ lifetime, and the remaining two were produced by his studio after his death in 1907.

For the permanent gallery’s opening in 1905, wooden structures with plaster copies of the figures were installed in place of stone porticoes.  In 1922, Mrs. Albright loaned the gallery the south group of figures, which were displayed on a wooden platform, while the remainder were kept in storage.  John Albright never made a formal gift of the statues during his lifetime.  After his death, his estate put the figures up for sale for $50,000—much of the family fortune was lost during the depression.   An urgent community fund-raising drive was launched to save the statues.  The estate accepted the $25,000 raised, and they were installed in their intended place in June 1934.

Dedication of the new gallery took place on May 31, 1905.  A large audience heard Harvard President Charles Eliot deliver the principal address, four choirs performed and dedicatory poems were recited.

In 1920, under a commission from Colonel Charles Clifton, chairman of the Pierce-Arrow Motor Company, E. B. Green designed Clifton Hall to the south of the 1905 building to house collections of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.  The society soon outgrew the space provided at Clifton Hall and, in 1929, relocated to the Esenwein and Johnson-designed Buffalo Museum of Science on Humboldt Parkway.  Colonel Clifton funded acquisition of Clifton Hall for the gallery, which used it for its art school.  The building was connected to the art gallery by means of an underground tunnel.  In 1938 and 1945, E. B. Green designed two expansions Clifton Hall.

By 1943, the gallery’s growing collection compelled consideration of its space requirements.  E. B. Green proposed an expansion of the building through the addition of galleries at the north and south porticoes, doubling the available exhibit space.  His plan was not pursued.

In his 1956 Annual Report, gallery director Gordon Smith proposed renovation and expansion to meet the pressing needs for more exhibit space.  Specifications included additional gallery space sufficient for at least 75 paintings, a new sculpture court and a 350-seat auditorium.  The following year, Paul Schweikher, chair of the Yale School of Architecture, was hired to design an addition.  His plan called for placement of a low modernist rectangular structure across the east façade of the 1905 building, visually forming a new base.  The board reportedly approved the plan at a private meeting.  When word leaked out, public opinion was almost universally negative.  By fall, the Schweickher plan had been abandoned, the gallery board apparently heeding a critic’s admonition: “may the spirit of John J. Albright haunt all those who have a hand in this dark deed.”

Following abandonment of the Schweickher plan, board member Seymour H. Knox Jr. turned to the leading modernist firm of Skidmore Owings Merrill.  The firm’s designs echoing Mies van der Rohe’s International Style of “Glass Box Modernism,” as epitomized in Lever House in New York City, captured Knox’s imagination.  Buffalo native and Kensington High School graduate Gordon Bunshaft was selected to lead a design team to effect a successful marriage between a contemporary addition and the neoclassical original.

The addition would be would have to connect smoothly with the existing building and serve as the new main entrance to the gallery.  Construction required removal of the stairs leading to the original main entrance.  It would contain 30,000 square feet of new exhibition space including galleries surrounding an open-air sculpture court, a restaurant, offices and visitor facilities.  A block clad in black glass, containing a 350-seat auditorium, appeared to float above a marble-clad base containing extensions of the galleries connecting to the 1905 Building. 

The 1905 Building also lacked public parking; it was suggested that “In the era of the automobile a public building space to park eight cars is ill-equipped to function properly.”  Consequently, the city agreed to the inclusion of a surface lot with a capacity of 144 cars in the area between the east façade and Elmwood Avenue.  As a result of construction, Delaware Park’s greenhouse was demolished.

Ground was broken on July 6, 1960.  Construction was funded primarily through a gift of $1,400,000 from the Seymour H. Knox Foundation and an additional $500,000 from private donors.  At its grand opening on January 19, 1962, the gallery was renamed The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in honor of Mr. Knox’s capital gift and his substantial support for new acquisitions.  The March 1962 issue of Architectural Forum declared, “The result is a stately harmony between old and new, without any obtrusion upon the handsome Ionic columned facades.”

Although the building was among Bunshaft’s smaller projects, he was exceptionally proud of work.  In 1990, his obituary in TheNew York Times opined that “the addition was typical of Mr. Bunshaft’s stylistic leanings: he made no attempt to echo the classical styles of the original museum, but instead set a simple, exceptionally elegant glass-and-marble box gently beside it.”

In 2001, the gallery began a major long-range space planning initiative, triggered in part by the fact that that it was impossible to display more than eight percent of its collection at one time.  At the same time, it undertook an exploration of how to achieve its mission in the 21st century.  Over the next several years, an intensive planning and public consultation process was undertaken, ending in the 2015 announcement of its “AK360” strategic plan, “Connecting Art, Ideas and People.”  The gallery also embarked on a capital campaign to fund construction and enhance the gallery’s endowment.

The gallery’s prospects for success brightened enormously in June 2016, when bond trader Jeffrey Gundlach pledged $42.5 million as a matching fund to spur the capital campaign.  Within a year, the match was raised, whereupon Gundlach pledged an additional $10 million match.  In recognition of his generosity, the gallery announced the addition of his name to those of Messrs. Albright and Knox.

With great fanfare in 2017, the gallery board announced its expansion plan, devised by architect Shohei Shigematsu of the international firm OMA.  It would create a new public entrance hall, add 23,000 square feet of new gallery space and create parking space beneath the existing parking lot, which would become landscaped green space.  New gallery space totaling 13,000 square feet would be located in a radically reconstructed section of the Bunshaft building, with an additional 10,000 square feet in an excavated area in front of the 1905 Building.  A principal feature of the design was a space to be built between the1905 building and the Bunshaft auditorium in place of the existing gallery space and sculpture court.  The new area was described as “a free public space,” “a town green” and “a social gathering space for people and events.”  Peculiarly, the gallery director promoted the concept, in part, by the facility with which Buffalo State College students would be able to transit through the new space between their parked cars on Lincoln Parkway and the campus!

Many in the community praised the plan.  In an editorial, The Buffalo News hailed “Albright’s big thinking,” calling the concept “stunning,” and capable of achieving gallery director Janne Sirén’s goal “to make the gallery and its environs. . . an irresistible and favorite gathering space for both residents and visitors.”  Response to the plan was by no means universally positive, however.  Strong opposition centered on the impact on the much-admired Bunshaft masterpiece.  This reaction was soon echoed by many critics and architectural historians across the country, alarmed that a “Modernist Masterpiece” was under threat by a project which “undoes the work of Buffalo’s most famous architect.”  Negative reaction centered on the elements of the proposal that would virtually obliterate an important and highly regarded work by the finest architect ever produced by Buffalo, and a man whose body of work earned him the profession’s highest accolade, the Pritzger Prize.  “What will we get for gutting and cutting Buffalo’s best post-war building?” queried architecture critic Alexandra Lange.  “A giant lobby, with a gift shop and space suitable for event rental.  Hardly core functions, whatever museums need to do to live.”

Protesting that the scheme was “only a concept” and urging patience until details emerged during the design process, the gallery mercifully relented and sent the proposal back for a rework.  Bunshaft was “only a building” after all, and the imperative that art have a proper home had to take precedence.  In reality, the gallery recognized that its own scheme “was only a building, after all” and proved that a better plan was possible.

In June 2018, after belated consultation with Preservation Studios of Buffalo and New York City’s PBDW to ensure sensitivity to the historic character of the existing campus, a radically changed proposal was put forward.  A new “ziggurat-shaped” building would now stand at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Iroquois Drive, enclosed in glass, providing overviews of the surrounding park and connected by a “scenic bridge” to the 1905 Building.   The new plan would increase display space to 50,000 square feet, quadrupling the portion of its collection that the gallery would be able to display.  The court of the Bunshaft building would be converted into an “indoor town square,” and Common Sky, a dramatic sculpture designed by Olafur Eliasson and intended to reflect Buffalo’s famous weather, would form a roof over the space. 

Groundbreaking is scheduled for November 2019, when the gallery will close for the duration of construction. The Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum is scheduled to open sometime in 2021.

And in Buffalo’s Temple Beth El Cemetery, Gordon Bunshaft may rest peacefully.