On Saturday, November 5, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum welcomed over three hundred guests to Standing Ovation, a festive evening to celebrate the innovative spirit of the Albright-Knox Northland exhibition program. The month of November is traditionally reserved for the museum’s fall gala, but with a spring opening celebration on the horizon, the museum decided to get creative and reimagine a new structure for the event.
“When planning this event, it was important to Kevin, Rachelle, and me to put the community first and reflect our shared vision for a museum that serves everyone,” said chairperson Roscoe Henderson of himself and other cochairs Kevin and Rachelle Robinson. “People really enjoyed themselves because the format of the event was open and accessible and gave people the chance to talk to one another.”
As a result, guests were able to spend more time with the artworks on view that evening—and each other!
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
The event was enlivened by performances by local performers Henri Star Muhammad, Curtis Lovell, and DJ Lisa Lux—B.Flo Girls.
“At every stage of planning, from extending invitations to our community partners to performance and entertainment, we made sure the event supported the museum’s initiatives of inclusivity, diversity, and engagement," said Kevin Robinson.
Henri Star Muhammad performs at Standing Ovation. Photo: Chuanling Lu
Curtis Lovell sings at Standing Ovation. Photo: Jeff Mace
DJ Lisa Lux—B. Flo Girls perform at Standing Ovation. Photo: Jeff Mace
“What was unique about this year was the one-night-only exhibition with local artists Julia, Tricia, Max, Fotini, Rachel, and Phyllis, whose creativity not only makes Buffalo an incredible place to live but also shows the diversity that exists within our community!” said chairperson Rachelle Robinson.
The works of about sixty artists were exhibited at Albright-Knox Northland over the course of the AKG’s three-year residency. From that group, the museum invited the six local artists-in-residence from the 2021 exhibition Hervé Tullet: Shape and Color to serve as Honorary Chairs of this event, a place of honor that has been occupied by global rockstars like Takashi Murakami and Anthony McCall.
Read more about the Honorary Chairs Julia Bottoms, Tricia Butski, Max Collins, Fotini Galanes, Rachel Shelton, and Phyllis Thompson.
Max Collins (American, born 1988), Humboldt Parkway: Now & Then, 2022. Wood panel, polyurethane, paper, wallpaper paste, and branches from Delaware Park. Photo: Jeff Mace
While in residence at Albright-Knox Northland, Collins delved into the history of Humboldt Parkway. Once a vibrant neighborhood, Humboldt was home to a thriving Black middle class, with a beautiful greenway at its heart that connected Buffalo’s city parks. Much of the neighborhood was demolished at mid-century, replaced with the concrete and asphalt road system known today. As with his mural, Collins presents the drab, black and white present-day in wheatpaste, a material that quickly degrades when exposed to the elements. But beneath it, the beautiful and colorful past endures, as if Collins is saying that, with time and nature—and maybe some help from its friends—Humboldt Parkway can return to its former glory.
Julia Bottoms (American, born 1988), Grow, 2022. Paint, plaster bandages, clay, wire, and papier-mâché. Photo: Jeff Mace
Over the last decade, Bottoms’s portraiture has pursued the truths of individual character in works of breathtaking communication and intimacy. However, the work on view today is a reflection on Bottoms’s own personal journey. The tree is a symbolic family portrait. The artist states, “The roots represent those whom I come from and the branches the various paths, people, and experiences that form a life.” The tree, in turn encases a self-portrait. At times working with her newborn son in one arm, Bottoms depicts herself without makeup or covering: an honest moment as an artist in her thirties, newly a mother.
Bottoms says, “This piece is connected to my time and work here at Northland. I began my residency not yet a mother and in a different phase of womanhood. My residency work explored matriarchal wisdom, so this celebration of Northland, for me, is deeply intertwined with my journey and this new branch as I, too, become a matriarch.”
Tricia Butski (American, born 1990), Vessel, 2022. Graphite on paper. Photo: Jeff Mace
A live model, often a family member, always serves as the starting point for Butski’s gorgeous and detailed drawings. As with the pandemic-born Equally Distant, 2021, that Butski created while in residence at Albright-Knox Northland, the figures are abstracted from the forms that compose and define it. Here, the artist has seemingly rendered every strand, braid, twist, and lock of the long black hair that, with shadow, is the only element to suggest the body at the center of the work. It is not so much a person, but these forms that hold the figure’s seemingly pregnant belly and form a “vessel.”
The work on view here is part of an ongoing series by Butski.
Fotini Galanes (American, born 1965). You & Me, 2018. Mixed medium on maple blocks. Photo: Jeff Mace
Fotini Galanes works across a variety of mediums, from intensely intricate drawings of organic forms to the large-scale mural painted as part of her residency. Perhaps what unites these varying modes is the way Galanes always engages the viewer in a dialogue about surfaces and what lies beneath. You & Me is a global storytelling project by way of discovering the qualitative transformation when we learn someone’s story. By exploring the unfamiliar through blocks of various material, composition, color, and texture, memories bubble to the surface, just waiting to be shared.
Rachel Shelton (American, born 1988). Passage, 2021. Acrylic monotype on Polytab. Photo: Jeff Mace
A series of monotype prints form what appear to be the bricks of an archway. Each print was then altered by hand-painting to achieve almost limitless variations. The abstract patterns and imagery in the “bricks” suggest underwater coral, fossilized shells, inky black galaxies, or the forecasts of a sonogram. The bricks together compose one of those elemental forms in human engineering: the arch. At this scale, a visitor could imagine stepping through the passageway to what lies beyond, but they would first have to imagine what that is.
The imagery in each brick was inspired by the interactions Shelton had with visitors to Northland during her residency. The archway is also, in a way, a record of what took place here.
Phyllis Thompson (American, born 1946). Ancestor Force, 2022. Chair, table, quilt, patterned fabric, doily, bible, gourds, found objects, peanuts in bowls, photo on Polytab, and photograph in frame. Photo: Jeff Mace
While in residence at Albright-Knox Northland Phyllis Thompson worked with photographs of ancestors, layering these images with prints and collage to produce the mural found on Northland Avenue. She discovered the portraits among her mother’s possessions, some of well-known family figures, while others were obscure to Thompson, stirring up only the ghosts of recollection. Here, Thompson offers a different form of memorialization. The altar presents the portrait of an ancestor along with favored objects in a welcoming setting.
The team of Delaware North and Patina Restaurant Group developed seven stations of cuisine inspired by the exhibitions that were on view at AK Northland, and, in addition to fabricating artworks for the event, artist Julia Bottoms contributed two cocktails to the menu and Phyllis Thompson shared a groundnut stew to honor her ancestors.
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Board Members Roscoe Henderson and Kevin Robinson and Rachelle Robinson served as chairpersons of the evening.
“Standing Ovation was about celebrating community,” said chairperson Kevin Robinson. “It was truly special to have the opportunity to chair an event in the Northland community where I grew up."
"The love I have for the AKG began in grade school. I am delighted to play a role in the awesome and bright future of the museum. Go AKG!” said Henderson.
Public Art Curator Aaron Ott, who was highly involved in programming exhibitions in our temporary residence, reflected on Albright-Knox Northland, "This space was really critical in ensuring that we walked the walk of saying, 'We are here for the community, we're a part of the community—and that the community is part of the museum.' I think the Northland space really solidified that for me."
Said Board President Alice Jacobs, “While we unfortunately have to give this building back to the city, I think you can look at Northland as an evolution of who we are in the community. This ethos of community connectedness and engagement is going to continue even more so in our new campus.”
Photo by Yves-Richard Blanc, Blanc Photographie.
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo by Yves-Richard Blanc, Blanc Photographie.
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo: Jeff Mace
Photo by Yves-Richard Blanc, Blanc Photographie.
Photo: Jeff Mace
Staff of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum at Standing Ovation. Photo: Jeff Mace