The Buffalo AKG Art Museum announced today that Andrea Alvarez has been promoted to the position of Associate Curator. The promotion comes as the museum prepares to open to the public on June 12, 2023, after the completion of the largest campus expansion and development project in its history. 

In making the announcement, Cathleen Chaffee, Charles Balbach Chief Curator, said, "Andrea's work as a curator and scholar is marked by her commitment to artists, and a deep and abiding love for contemporary art. Her scholarship, pragmatism, and advocacy for artists from diverse backgrounds have had a lasting impact on the museum and its collection. It has been a pleasure to work alongside Andrea, and I am delighted to continue doing so as she embraces her expanded role as Associate Curator."

Alvarez joined the Buffalo AKG as Curatorial Fellow in 2017. She was promoted to Assistant Curator in 2021. Most recently, Alvarez coordinated Firelei Báez's Chorus of the Deep (something ephemeral and beautifully whole, when seen from the edge of one's vision, too full when taken head on), 2023, a major site-specific commission in the museum's recently renovated Seymour H. Knox Building. During her tenure, Alvarez has organized numerous exhibitions at the museum, including Comunidades Visibles: The Materiality of Migration (2021); Sarah Braman: Finding Room (2022), which she co-curated with Public Art Project Coordinator Zack Boehler; and The Swindle: Art Between Seeing and Believing (2018). In 2018 she was co-curator of the museum's presentation of the Brooklyn Museum-organized exhibition. We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85. For the museum's opening, she is curating Looking Back: Lucas Samaras's Mirrored Room, the first exhibition in the Buffalo AKG's new M&T Bank Gallery.

A particular focus of Alvarez's curatorial work is Latinx and other artists of global diasporas. Building upon her scholarship in modernist abstraction and pedagogy, she researches the ways in which institutions and sociopolitical boundaries influence artistic production. Alvarez has stewarded the acquisition of numerous artworks into the Buffalo AKG's collection, including those by Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Patrick Martinez, and Ronny Quevedo. Her scholarly writing has appeared in Artpress and post(s), and forthcoming work will appear in Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum Collection Handbook, to which she has contributed numerous entries.

In addition to her curatorial work, Alvarez is co-chair of the museum's Inclusive Culture Team. She is a founding board member of the Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art and was selected by the American Association of Art Museum Curators for its 2020 mentorship program. 

Alvarez completed her MA and PhD at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Art History, where she wrote her dissertation on the impact of institutions on Josef Albers's art and pedagogy. Prior to joining the Buffalo AKG, she was Director of Exhibitions at the VCUarts Anderson Gallery.

About the Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Founded in 1862, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) is the sixth-oldest public art institution in the United States. For 160 years, the Buffalo AKG has collected, conserved, and exhibited the art of its time, often working directly with living artists. This tradition has given rise to one of the world's most extraordinary collections of modern and contemporary art. In June 2023, following the completion of the most significant campus development and expansion project in its history, the Buffalo AKG will open to the public for the first time. The project is funded by a $230 million capital campaign, the largest such campaign for a cultural institution in the history of Western New York, including $195 million raised for construction and $35 million in additional operating endowment funds. 

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