Centered on the Art in Buffalo by Dick Hirsch in Business First
Read more at http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/print-edition/2014/02/07/centered-on-the-art-of-buffalo.html?page=all
When their retirement time comes, many people pack up and move south. When he considered his options, Anthony Bannon decided to move west rather than south. His starting point was Rochester and he traveled some 68 miles west to Buffalo.
For him, it was a familiar route. After a successful career in Buffalo as a journalist, critic and museum director, he left in 1996 to become executive director of the George Eastman House in Rochester.
Bannon returned to Buffalo in May 2012 for a second engagement as executive director of the Burchfield Penney Art Center, a job in which he had served for 11 years prior to leaving for Rochester.
“When I was planning to retire from Eastman, I had decided I was going to spend my time writing,” Bannon recalled, “and I had some book ideas and an indication of interest from a major publisher. I was looking forward to an exciting new career but instead I had an opportunity that I couldn’t refuse.”
Bannon had been involved in the early discussions about a new Burchfield Penney building and had visited many times since it opened in 2008. For him, the chance to return as executive director and participate in the fifth anniversary observance was an energizing turn of events.
“The Buffalo-Niagara area has been very much like an arts colony, attracting and inspiring creative people in every medium, dating back to the time of Red Jacket, and the Burchfield Penney is at the center of that kind of activity,” he said.
“Now we have this fabulous building, the last museum designed by Charles Gwathmey, and it has become known wherever people admire and study Modernist buildings. It is a LEED building (Leadership in Education and Environment Design) and we will be paying close attention to the environment in our programming.”
Bannon likes to compare the Buffalo-Niagara area to notable arts colonies such as Yaddo, near Saratoga Springs; Taos, N.M.; and Provincetown, Mass.
He is planning an exhibit highlighting milestones that had a major impact on the arts in the area. Among them: the lure of Niagara Falls, which attracted artists and photographers from around the world beginning in the 18th century; the opening of the Erie Canal, in 1825, inspiring westward migration and colorful times; the emergence of the photo-pictorialists in Buffalo, a group of photographers who gained international renown for producing museum-quality images.
Regional artists were motivated by government-supported public art efforts created under the auspices of the WPA during the 1930s. The Art Institute of Buffalo and later the Albright Art School provided further stimulation. Charles Burchfield emerged as a leading figure.
First moving to Buffalo from his native Ohio to become a wallpaper designer for the Birge Company, Burchfield quit that work to devote his life to his art, becoming an acclaimed watercolorist, a role model for a generation of Buffalo artists.
It is Bannon’s plan to develop “a timeline of excellence,” an exhibit tracing the area’s creative surges through the 20th century to the present time. The Burchfield Penney goal is to emulate the creative spirit of the past and nurture it in the present and the future.
“There is a difference between an art museum and an art center,” he stressed. “The main function of a museum is as a repository of art and a place for exhibitions. We are an art center. We organize exhibitions to be shown here and then exhibited in other museums. That is part of our educational mission. We are known as an international center for watercolor.
“Our focus is also on other art forms – music, photography, film, dance and poetry,“ he added. “We attempt to stimulate the community’s interest in the work that is taking place in studios throughout the area. The Burchfield Penney encourages learning and focuses on our richly creative and diverse community.”
Innovation is an important part of the Bannon approach. The most prominent example is the permanent installation on Elmwood Avenue of “The Front Yard,” with three slender stainless steel towers projecting visual images on the curving front wall of the building, accompanied by sound. It is best seen at night but is in operation 24/7.
The latest concept is the financing and creation by 2015 of a barge that will cruise the Erie Canal from Buffalo to Brooklyn, presenting entertainment and exhibitions.
Bannon sees his second term at the Burchfield Penney as a rare opportunity. He hasn’t lost his zest for originality.
Dick Hirsch is a veteran Buffalo journalist. Email him at BfloTales@aol.com.