Construction 45 feet below the surface is going full tilt at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery to build a new 3-story, 30,000-square-foot glass building at the northern end of the campus. The pit was formed by excavating 38,000 cubic yards of soil – enough to fill more than 2,700 dump trucks.
An underground parking lot by the southernmost foundation wall is also being built. To date, 2,337 cubic yards of concrete has been poured, reinforced by 209 tons of steel rebar. The final foundation wall is expected to be poured next week. A crane is helping with the process for pouring the foundation walls and concrete slabs.
Next month, enormous air handlers and chillers – too large to fit through a door – will be installed in the basement. The steel frame for the new building is expected to start going up later this spring.
Repairs to the original 1905 building and the renovation of the 1962 addition are also underway.
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The $168 million expansion project broke ground on Nov. 22, 2019, and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2022, when the museum will be formally renamed the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. AKG stands for the museum's major donors: John J. Albright, Seymour H. Knox Jr. and Jeffrey E. Gundlach.
"The progress we have made in the past year has been remarkable to witness and be a part of,” said Janne Sirén, the museum's director. “In the coming months, the new museum campus will really begin to take shape. All of us are excited to welcome the world to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in 2022.”
Workers pour the concrete foundation walls for the new structure at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery which is adding the building through it's AK360 Campus Expansion project, Monday, March 22, 2021. The project is planned to be completed in 2022 and the museum will have more than double the exhibition space when it reopens as the Buffalo AKG Art Gallery.
Mark Sommer covers preservation, development, the waterfront, culture and more. He's also a former arts editor at The News.
