Pictures Of Art in Buffalo

[artinthe716]

The Castellani Art Museum at Niagara University was a fun experience, but seemed a little empty in comparison to the effort it took to get there. It seems like the museum is more for teaching than for actual gallery showing. However, I loved their Autism awareness exhibit. There were a lot of really different pieces of art (ceramic, painting, etc) that worked really well, and they showed a lot of different faces that Autism tends to take on in people. Some were perfectly painted and painstakingly created, while others showed anger and confusion. It was a super interesting gallery, however I wish they could have displayed the works more visibly. 

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I love the Sheas theater. I go there practically every month, it feels like, to check out some new production they’re putting on. Pictured is the stage from The Lion King, however I’ve also gone to Drag shows and School of Rock this semester. The architecture of the entire building just feels like old opera glamour, while also being just an incredible space for any show. Everywhere you look (with the house lights on) is beautifully painted and sculpted to make everything feel more expensive and immaculate. 

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The Forest Lawn scavenger hunt was a really fun way to spend the two weeks around Spring Break. I’ve been to Forest Lawn before, just driving around looking at cool gravestones and trying to find Rick James. However, I didn’t spend as much time walking among the graves as I did this time around, but I think I enjoyed this more. The structure of the hunt and really looking to find the motifs made me take the time to look around for different things in the cemetery. It was probably the most fun assignment I’ve done in my time at college. 

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I loved the Buffalo Zoo, and I feel like I spent a lot more time reading the placards there than the Karpeles Museum. The Zoo has a large focus on efforts of conservation, which I thought was a very environmentally conscious message for a zoo to have. The animals who live in colder climates were definitely a lot more active in this weather, which was really fun to watch!

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Burchfield Penney

The Burchfield Penney was just about as weird as I thought it would be. The gallery space itself was incredibly tall but mostly empty space, while the actual works were in winding passageways in one large room. However, I loved the experience. I didn’t get a good picture of it, but I liked one art piece that was a stack of box fans with mouths over them, so that the paper mouths were constantly moving. I also liked the Opems exhibit, which was just artwork with a trippy music and sounds playing in the background. 

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The above picture isn’t mine, but it is of the Darwin Martin House Complex. 

If I were to have a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, first of all, I wouldn’t. The man seemed like a psychopathic control freak, who wanted to mold the lives of the people in his houses, rather than let the people make it their own. Secondly, I would have loved the greenhouse in the back of the Martin House. It is the most beautiful place on Earth, I think, complete with a large Nike statue. 

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The Karpeles Museums were super interesting. They were these reclaimed and renovated Christian buildings that were bought to hold these manuscripts and artworks, and the buildings themselves were beautiful. Unfortunately, I believe this space wasn’t really used efficiently. They were more places you could rent out for events rather than gallery spaces. 

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Albright Knox, February 2018. “We Wanted a Revolution”.

I could have spent hours in the Albright-Knox. I even considered signing up for a membership just to be able to sit on their benches to sketch or write while looking at these artworks. The collection was out of this world. The black radical women exhibition was so powerful and thought-provoking that I spent a lot of time looking at each piece on its own, as well as the audio/visual works. 

[artinthe716]

UB Anderson Gallery, 2018

This repurposed school was a really cool place for a gallery. I liked how a lot of the artworks were held in a room with a wide open window, it brought a lot of natural light in that I felt really worked with their themes of “light, line, and shape”. This was also one of the first galleries we visited that had 3-dimensional artwork on the walls, which I found fascinating. 

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Buffalo Arts Studio, 2018

This gallery was in a re-purposed space, and it was really interesting. Hughes’ artwork, which was the focus of the gallery, really connected with the building in a lot of ways. He used a lot of different materials in making his artwork, so it was kind of like repurposing as well. I loved the way they had student work next to professional work as well, it was awesome. 

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Tony Conrad @ Hallwalls 

Hallwalls is a super neat art gallery space. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Tony Conrad’s art was a little over my head in terms of its avant-garde nature, but then again, the way Hallwalls is set up is pretty avant-garde anyway. 

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Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural site, Pan-American Exposition exhibit. 

The Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site was an incredible experience. I’d highly recommend it to anyone who visits Buffalo or even just lives in Buffalo, because it’s an incredibly well-done work of local history. The staff were friendly and super knowledgeable. I asked about the books in the library of the home, which I found interesting, and the docent who was showing me around knew exactly which books were original and which were brought in by other groups in town.