Visual Arts & Art Museums

Buffalo can boast of a vibrant visual arts scene, with a breadth of art museums and galleries that keep the most ardent art enthusiast busy for days. With the reopening of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (the former Albright-Knox Art Gallery), Buffalo is ready to take its place on the global art circuit.

Buffalo AKG Art Museum

The jewel in Buffalo’s cultural crown – the Buffalo AKG Art Museum – has reopened after undergoing three years of renovation and expansion that adds 30,000 square feet for special exhibitions and the museum’s world-renowned collection of modern and contemporary art.

Burchfield Penney Art Center (BPAC)

No art enthusiast should miss the Burchfield Penney Art Center (BPAC), an 84,000 square-foot museum dedicated to the art of the Buffalo region, highlighted by the largest public collection by famed American watercolorist Charles Burchfield. Works from the collection are in continuous rotation, so no two visits are alike. On the second Fridays of every month, the BPAC hosts happy hours, performances, concerts, screenings, and other events.

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center

Founded in 1974, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center continues to present art, media, and music that challenges and extends traditional boundaries. Hallwalls is located in the former Delaware Asbury Methodist Church, renovated and repurposed by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco and Righteous Babe Records under a new identity as Asbury Hall at Babeville.

Art Galleries

CEPA is a 44-year-old internationally recognized arts center focusing on photography and photo-related arts. Located in the historic Market Arcade Complex, the center is known for expanding the limits of image making. CEPA also operates Big Orbit Gallery, a multidisciplinary contemporary space on Buffalo’s burgeoning West Side, which features innovative art installations.

Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center is another shining light in Buffalo’s visual arts scene, with a 35-year history of innovation in film, video, and new media installations.

Buffalo Arts Studio is not only an outstanding gallery, but also a community of working artists who share studio space in the repurposed Ford Model T assembly plant. Gallery visitors can view artists as they work. Every forth Friday, the gallery extends its hours for public artist receptions.

UB Anderson Gallery is housed in an elegantly remodeled former public school in the University Heights neighborhood. Originally established by David Anderson, son of noted New York gallerist Martha Jackson, it was later donated to the University at Buffalo (UB), along with a collection of 1,200 modernist works by noted artists. UB now operates it as a museum with changing exhibitions.

UB Art Gallery, on the university’s North Campus, mounts thought-provoking exhibitions by national artists. Further north, a 30-minute drive from Buffalo takes you to the Castellani Museum on the campus of Niagara University near Niagara Falls, with its rotating collection of regional and national art, including works by Helen Frankenthaler, Georges Rouault, William DeKooning, Keith Haring, and Pablo Picasso.

There’s also an evolving selection of smaller commercial and nonprofit art spaces to satisfy every taste, including Art Dialogue Gallery (traditional and modern), K Art (Native American), Benjaman Gallery (historical to contemporary), BICA (edgy contemporary), Starlight Studio (for artists with disabilities), tiny Box Gallery (experimental), Rivalry Projects (contemporary), El Museo (eclectic), Revolution (pop surrealism), Pine Apple Company (lowbrow) and Raft of Sanity.