Moments from Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Founded in 1862, it is one of the oldest public art institutions in the United States, and for most of the twentieth century it built its reputation on buying contemporary work while it was still contemporary rather than waiting for consensus to form: it picked up major Abstract Expressionist and Pop pieces in the 1950s and 60s while plenty of bigger museums were still hesitating. In 2023 it reopened after a major expansion and renamed itself the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, adding the Gundlach Building, a striking glass structure by OMA's Shohei Shigematsu that roughly doubled the museum's gallery space and sits connected to the original 1905 Greek Revival building by an underground concourse.

Because the collection was built on buying ahead of the curve, it has real depth in postwar American painting that museums twice its size sometimes lack, so don't treat it as a regional stop-off, the Pollocks, Rothkos, and Clyfford Stills here hold their own against any major city collection. Walk both buildings rather than just the new wing, the contrast between the 1905 neoclassical galleries and Shigematsu's glass addition is itself a small lesson in how museum architecture has changed its mind about what art needs around it.