The Buffalo AKG Art Museum Records document the history of the organization from its inception in 1862 as The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy to the present day. They consist of the official records of the museum, its staff, and its volunteer organizations, including minutes of the Board of Directors; department files, such as curatorial exhibition files and registrarial shipping and loan records; directors’ correspondence; photographs; and video and audiotape interviews.

Highlights include installation photographs of exhibitions held at the museum from the 1940s to the 1990s and files on important exhibitions such as the Alfred Stieglitz–organized International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in 1910 and Contemporary Art—Acquisitions 1954–1957 in 1957, the opening of which was attended by a veritable who’s who of Abstract Expressionist artists.

A finding aid is available for Museum Records through about 1987. In addition, finding aids are available for the records of our first eight directors: Charles M. Kurtz (1905–1909), Cornelia Bentley Sage Quinton (1910–1924), William M. Hekking (1925–1931), Gordon B. Washburn (1931–1942), Andrew C. Ritchie (1942–1949), Edgar C. Schenck (1949–1955), Gordon M. Smith (1955–1973), and Robert T. Buck, Jr. (1973–1983). To determine if the Records hold materials relevant to your research needs, please contact Archivist Gabrielle Carlo at 716.270.8275 or gcarlo@buffaloakg.org.

Begun in 1975, the Video Vasari project documented thoughts, theories, ideas, and personalities of major figures in modern and contemporary art through interviews conducted by the Buffalo AKG. The majority of interviews are still in their native format, and are digitized at the cost of the requestor on an as-needed basis. To receive an inventory of the Video Vasari collection, please contact Archivist Gabrielle Carlo at 716.270.8275 or gcarlo@buffaloakg.org.

The Archives and Special Collections has exhibition catalogues, monographs, and periodicals deemed rare by virtue of their age and/or their scarcity, including one of four existing library copies of the catalogue for the 1961 Martha Jackson Gallery exhibition Environments, Situations, and Spaces; 19th-century Niagara Falls souvenir books; and Alfred Stieglitz’s journal Camera-Work.

Compiled by local painter Eugenie Hauenstein, the Hauenstein Scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings, letters, exhibition catalogues and announcements, brochures, and other printed material from 1886 to 1905 concerning The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the Student’s Art Club, the Woman’s Art Club of New York, the Art Students’ League, the Bohemian Sketch Club, and other local art organizations.

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum Scrapbooks consist of clippings about the museum’s events, exhibitions, and people culled by librarians from Buffalo-area newspapers from 1906 to 1910, from March 1913 to March 1914, and from 1917 to 2000.