Buffalo Rising Online

That piece was actually bought by the AKAG for $10,000 many years ago. Not a bad investment....

AKAG should give Carl Dennis a 10% cut on the sale after all the media attention he helped generate boosted international interest in the auction...

Only some of these works are "antiquities"--they span over a thousand years of art, including master paintings. Sadly, most of the media in Buffalo accepted the Albright's spin on the sale and used the Albright's language of euphemism: "deaccessioning" (which means sale to the highest bidder) and "antiquities," which for most people conjured the thought of dust. I'll give the Albright-Knox credit for excellent and aggressive media spin and damage control. Their judgement and taste were questioned, and they summoned every friend and ally they could to move the spotlights off the masterpieces for sale and onto doomsday prophecies of closings and irrelavance (in whose eyes?), onto the backward folk who dared to miss the artwork their taxes pay to house, and always onto pious and stern sermons about the museum's "mission," as if it were the ark of the covenant.

I hope more and more people will start watching what the Albright- Knox buys with their new funds. Let us compare it to what they sold and let our community contemplate what deeply moves its spirits. The Albright-Knox exists for this community, not for a tiny band of curators, collectors, and opinionists for art journals. Nor for the relatively small number of tourists who visit it. It exists for the enrichment of this community. And unlike Picasso, the twentieth century artist who thought it supremely stupid to segregate contemporary from older art, to even approach art with such a small mind, the Albright-Knox has decided to be a real gallery, in the best Madison Avenue sense of that word.

All this could be easier to swallow if someone from that board, or the Director, expressed genuine pain and disquiet over the loss of magnificent pieces. I looked hard for that genuine emotion--there was none. The Albright is now an even smaller place than it was, and unless fresh winds blow through its offices, it will get smaller and smaller.

yes I agree....they got the money that the budgeted for....and they know that Buffalonians overwhelmingly disapprove of the sale of these items so common sense should tell them to stop the sale of further items......NOW!

chris69... seriously could you be more ill informed.. Albright Knox members overwhelmingly APPROVED of the sale.. by a 3 to 1 margin.. keep the sale going.. new blood.. new art into a great museum can only improve.. especially considering the fact that most of the for sale pieces haven't even been in public view for years

Good job Albright.. about time someone had some foresight

Spoiled,

75% of the Albright Knox membership chose NOT to vote. Only 25% of the membership did vote, and among that group the results were roughly 1200 for the sale and 400 against. So, less than 25% of the AK members voted to support this sale of artwork. This was after the AK mounted an aggressive media and telephone campaign to sway its members, and given their superior access to media, money, and influential allies, it was hardly surprising that they got a majority of those who chose to vote for selling the art.

The more revealing point is that by far most members of the AK did not feel sufficiently moved to vote at all. This tells us something about the impact of the Albright-Knox's recent aesthetic decisions. Most people don't really care what they do, and the museum's lack of relevance and meaning to Western New York will continue as it becomes a narrower and narrower museum.

Are people in this country ever moved to vote for anything? It seems they are not. Choosing not to vote, is a vote in itself.

Even though I personally think all this modern art equates to crap, it is still the museum's mission. Want to change the mission? Donate some $$$ to create a new ancient art wing or a whole new museum.

The only reason I would say to halt the rest of the sale, is to let the remaining items appreciate in value for future sales.

Once upon a time people mocked Picasso and Wright. Now we celebrate having ownership of some thier work here in WNY. The future is speculative, but we have to prepare for it and persue it. Especially when it is the museum's mission. We shall see how well the museum's future aquisitions will have turned out in 30-40 years.

Medina, Yes, I found Mr. Jackson's columns embarrassing and a chore to read. And I don't know why Artvoice doesn't edit his pieces, which in this case were just wandering and tangential. In the past I have enjoyed some of his arguments; this time, he descended into the cheapest irony available: sarcasm. But it is not just Mr. Jackson. Most of the Buffalo art community leaders circled wagons with the Albright-Knox and brought the debate into low standards of argument. Name calling, hyperbole, tangential aspersions about people's character and personal lives, etc.... What the community needs to do is let the Albright-Knox know how parochail and narrow their recently mission has become. The fact that so few members of the gallery voted in this debate suggests that the gallery just doesn't matter that much anymore, except to the small sect of curators and opinionists for the Art magazines.

Im kinda getting tired of the elitism at the A-K and the B-P with their secret meetings and secret agendas....especially when 25% of the members voted but led the allusion that the majority 51%-100% approved

Since when did 25% get to dictate the artistic tastes for the entire Buffalo Community. The last I heard the A-K and the B-P were institutions serving the public like the Historical, Science, Zoo, Botanical, even Hospitals...and all of them care and are responsive not just to their leadership/management but the the surrounding community and the local public....something the A-K and the B-P fail to learn...for in their world their artistic tastes and decisions have to be the decisions for the entire city

Imagine if the Historical Society said that only their version of history or the Science Museum said that only their version of Science was going to be represented...and that regardless of the greater public....their management/leadership has spoken.