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Lenses: Ways of Seeing Buffalo and its Architecture


  • The Lipsey Architecture Center Buffalo at the Richardson Olmsted Campus 444 Forest Avenue Buffalo, NY, 14213 United States (map)

On display from Thursday, December 16, 2021 through Sunday, April 10, 2022 at The Lipsey Architecture Center Buffalo at the Richardson Olmsted Campus

Thursdays, 2–8 pm
Fridays–Saturdays, 10 am–4pm
Sundays, 12–4 pm

*Closed between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day

Presented by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (the future Buffalo AKG), the Buffalo History Museum, the Lipsey Architecture Center Buffalo, and Preservation Buffalo Niagara and sponsored by Arc Building Partners, the Charles D. and Mary A. Bauer Foundation, the Center for the Study of Art, Architecture, History and Nature, the Erie County Cultural Board, the John R. Oishei Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Preservation League of New York State.

About Lenses

Lenses: Ways of Seeing Buffalo and Its Architecture is a unique collaboration between four Buffalo institutions engaged in various aspects of the cultural life of our community. Preservation Buffalo Niagara, the Stanford Lipsey Architecture Center Buffalo at the Richardson Olmsted Campus, the Buffalo AKG, and the Buffalo History Museum. This exhibit allows our community insight into how buildings and places in Buffalo have been valued and presents more inclusive ways of seeing place-based value throughout our larger community.

Among architecture aficionados, Buffalo has long had a strong reputation as both a repository for great talent (as in Sullivan’s Guaranty Building) and an inspiration point for great talent (as in Le Corbusier‘s relationship with our grain elevators). In 1940, the Albright Art Gallery invited Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr., widely considered the father of American architectural history, to make an exhibition about Buffalo’s architecture, mirroring one that then Gallery Director Gordon Washburn had seen mounted in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Buffalo exhibition, seen by more than 30,000 visitors to the Gallery during its month-long run, concluded with Mr. Hitchcock’s assertion:

“The hope of the future must lie at least as much in the establishment of a new and broader frame of planning, as in the erection of single buildings of distinction. The future ought also to provide some means of preserving the finer moments of the past, instead of allowing that indiscriminate destruction which has, during the present century, removed far more excellent buildings than have been built.”

No mere reprisal, the 2021 exhibition Lenses: Ways of Seeing Buffalo and Its Architecture is both based upon, and placed in counterpoint to, the original exhibition, in both intention and display.

This exhibit takes a reflective, questioning view of Hitchcock’s pronouncements regarding which parts of Buffalo’s built environment have value and seeks to contextualize Hitchcock’s work by delving into city builders and social histories not represented in his work: women, African Americans, Indigenous people, and all of those outside of the “Great Man” theory of stylistic formalism that Hitchcock espoused.

The Beyond Hitchcock portion of the exhibit is a collaboration between Preservation Buffalo Niagara Executive Director Jessie Fisher and University of Buffalo Professor Dr. Charles L. Davis II and his students, in which the canonicity presented in the original 1940 exhibit is re-imagined and re-worked.

Lenses includes new graphical and written material to encourage visitors to reflect on how the privileged white male academic gaze has shaped how we perceive value in our built world, and how that perception of value shapes what parts of its architectural legacy Buffalo has protected and what parts it has lost. The exhibit is designed to give attendees a more diverse and inclusive look at architectural and preservation values, and to encourage more equitable community building practices for the future.

In addition to the exhibition itself, a speakers series will take place March through April that will bring local, national, and international scholars and practitioners into Buffalo to discuss the themes of the exhibit in greater depth.

*All COVID-19 public health and safety requirements applicable at the time of preview will apply.

Description taken from Preservation Buffalo Niagara, here.

Volunteers Needed

Volunteers are needed to help staff the event on Feb. 4, Feb. 10, Feb. 20, March 20, March 26, April 1, and April 7. Shifts are three hours, but shorter shifts are welcome.

If you’re able to volunteer, email Gretchan F. Grobe, the Senior Guest Services Representative at Albright Knox Gundlach, for time slots and additional information. She can be reached at ggrobe@albrightknox.org.