Burchfield Penney Art Center

Burchfield Penney Art Center - Table of Contents

Exterior - Burchfield Penney Art Center
at Buffalo State College
1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY
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View from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery lawn	View from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery lawn	View from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery lawn	View from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery lawn

		North elevation	North elevation

Excerpt
Up with the new: Recent and Current Projects
By Barry A. Muskat
Buffalo Spree, July/August 2006

I find it remarkable that intensely negative comments keep surfacing about the new design for the BPAC. This is an important building that will take the Burchfield out of its inadequate facilities in Rockwell Hall, boost the institution from the minor leagues, and enhance the museum district. It’s been years in development and is designed by Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel, who, at this point of their productive careers, are world-class architects with an impressive portfolio.

The BPAC will be moving to a freestanding building at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Rockwell Road. I had the privilege to spend time with Gwathmey and Siegel in their New York offices and was extremely impressed by the thought, attention, and logic that went into every minor detail of the scheme. I’m also very confident that the Gallery’s interiors will be amazing. (Spree, 3/06.) The building’s exterior, however, has generated a lot of whining: It doesn’t match the fabric of Elmwood Avenue; Its principal entry should face Elmwood; The wall is just too plain; It should be red brick to match Clifton Hall.

The very nature and beauty of the arts is that we’ll all never agree on stylistic issues, but it strikes me that some of the most vocal protests against the new BPAC have substantially more volume than validity.

Matching the fabric of Elmwood Avenue: Just how does that all-encompassing and threadbare catchphrase relate? I think the fabric that is being referred to really begins at the corner of Forest Avenue and weaves southwards from there. The Albright-Knox, Clifton Hall, the Psychiatric Center, and Buffalo State College all are a part of a quilt of different sorts. Mercantile storefronts that meet the urban sidewalk are nowhere to be found on the section from Delaware Park and the Scajaquada south to Forest. The majority of this section of Elmwood has a more stately quality, formal buildings, and a hint of Olmsted’s landscape plan for the Psych Center.

Its principal entry should face Elmwood: Why is that dictum at all appropriate for an art gallery and for an institution that is integrally tied to an academic campus? The BPAC is layered in mission and purpose with Buffalo State College, its Fine Arts program, and its Art Conservation program. Why would the entry turn its back to the campus and its students?

The wall is just too plain: Oh, give me a break. The fabric of the building is balanced with interesting sustainable materials—limestone, glass, magnesium bricks, and zinc panels—and is designed as a backdrop to outdoor sculpture. The building is set back to maximize the greenspace of the five-acre site. The natural material of the zinc-clad wall will develop a patina with age. As it weathers, it will form an appropriate backdrop to a sculpture park for the permanent collection or rotating installations.

It should be red brick to match Clifton and Rockwell Halls: Lasting architecture does not always match. If it did, every structure in the built environment would be made of one perfect material. That’s just not the way it works. Individual buildings have individual character, yet relate to their context in proportion and rhythms.

I believe that the people who are demanding matching brick as the only appropriate material for any building on that site are the same people who, in 1964, would have protested Gordon Bunshaft’s proposed addition to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. E. B. Green’s original Albright is an exquisite Greek temple. Bunshaft’s rectilinear masterpiece is the ultimate refinement of classic Modernist simplicity and as such is the perfect foil to respect the original structure.

The BPAC is on a winning track and the city will be better for it. Indeed—thanks on its plans for a new building that can professionally hold and conserve a world-class collection—the museum has recently received substantial new donations. The BPAC’s new home is a well-designed building that will serve the university and the community well. Let’s get on board with the full support this project deserves.

Special thanks to Director Ted Pietrzak for his cooperation and Curatorial Assistant Victor Shanchuk Jr. for his assistance in 2009
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