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Adventurous Collecting: The Room of Contemporary Art

Tuesday, August 22, 1989Sunday, October 29, 1989

Black Waves by Morris Graves. Image courtesy of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Digital Assets Collection and Archives, Buffalo, New York.

1962 Building

This exhibition was featured in the then-called North Corridor, and acknowledged the farsighted acquisitions of the Room of Contemporary Art group, including Charles Demuth’s Lancaster, 1921.

About the Room of Contemporary Art

Established in 1939, the Room of Contemporary Art was envisioned as a both a physical site devoted solely to the continuously rotating presentation of new art within the museum and a means to reinvigorate and reaffirm the museum’s dedication to collecting the art of its time.

It was managed by a special independent committee initially consisting of Buffalo attorney Philip J. Wickser (who helped to conceive the room and who drafted its charter), Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Albright Art Gallery Director Gordon B. Washburn, and artists Charles E. Burchfield and Anna Glenny Dunbar, both of whom called Buffalo home. Through the Room of Contemporary Art fund, the museum acquired Fernand Léger's La fume (Smoke), 1912; Joan Miró's Carnaval d'Arlequin (Carnival of Harlequin), 1924–25; and Henri Matisse's La Musique (Music), 1939, among many others.

This exhibition was organized by Curator Cheryl Brutvan.