A group of college professors, artists and community members led by local Pulitzer Prize-winner Carl Dennis is mounting a campaign against the upcoming sale of items from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's permanent collection.
The group intends to rally Albright-Knox members to demand an explanation for what it describes as a lack of community input on the planned sale. The gallery announced in November it would sell nearly 200 of its antiquities through Sotheby's New York City auction house.
"It was a totally secretive process," said Dennis, a former UB professor and winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. "There wasn't a hint that this was even being deliberated until we found out that the objects were already on their way to Sotheby's."
The group, called "Buffalo Art Keepers," consists largely of current and former faculty members from UB and Buffalo State College. The group is urging the gallery's more than 6,000 members to write letters opposing the sale of the museum's long-held antiquities in hopes of convening a public meeting between members and the gallery's board of directors and administration.
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Albright-Knox Director Louis Grachos denied Friday that the process had been secretive. He said public discussions about selling some portion of the gallery's collection were under way as long ago as 1999 and that the board's decision was made public immediately.
"When the board of directors approved moving forward with the deaccessioning project and we requested that a certain group of materials be considered for deaccessioning, we immediately went to the press," Grachos said.
Three days elapsed between the board's decision and the official announcement.
As he has done since the Nov. 10 announcement, Grachos reaffirmed the gallery's mission statement and characterized the action by the 34-member board of directors to divest a significant portion of the gallery's antiquities as part of an attempt to "acquire, exhibit, and preserve modern and contemporary art."
The board of directors represents "the entire spectrum of the community," Grachos said. "It's elected by the membership and is always acting in the best interest of the gallery."
Dennis, who has met with the gallery's leaders in recent weeks, called the decision reckless and argues that the antiquities provide valuable context to the contemporary art that gives the Albright-Knox its international reputation.
"If you're a contemporary maker of art, you are inspired by seeing that older work in the context of the new. All the modern makers of the art that we appreciate today began by studying these older masters," Dennis said. "In a sense, we're throwing away their influences."
David Derner, a local sculptor and member of the group, counts the Albright-Knox's collection of classical and other early sculpture as a major influence on his career.
"I learned my craft on those pieces," Derner said, referring to the museum's classical Roman statues "Artemis and the Stag" and the "Seated Poet," the first of which will go to auction in June. "Doesn't Buffalo deserve to have a small collection that gives people a sense of the history of art?"
The full list of items up for auction at Sotheby's will be released Monday, according to Grachos.
The delay in releasing the list, originally expected in late January, has increased frustration from group members about what exactly is at stake.
Sotheby's had published a selection of highlights -- including "Artemis and the Stag" and a granite sculpture of the Indian god Shiva -- in November.
e-mail: cdabkowski@buffnews.com
