The Center participates in BPO celebration of Dale Chihuly...thanks to Artpark!

This past Wednesday night, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra's 2014-2015 season began with a bang--a metaphorical bang, as any actual banging is highly problematic when the set design is made almost completely of priceless glass art by Dale Chihuly. For their first performance of the season, the BPO chose Bela Bartok's opera, "Bluebeard's Castle," complete with the fantastical and intricate set designed by internationally reknown glass artist Dale Chihuly, who was fascinated by the dark love story of obsession and secrets. It was a fantastic event that really showcased the Western New York (and beyond!) commuity's love and of Chihuly's art. The BPO did a great job of pairing the vibrancy of the opera and the set design with fascinating educational opportunities from regional arts and community institutions, such as the Corning Museum of Glass, the Albright Knox Art Gallery, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. I admit, it was stiff competition....The Corning Museum of Glass was doing live glass blowing demonstrations, the Albright Knox Art Gallery brought original Chihuly pieces from their collection, and I was there, as the Burchfield Penney Art Center's Archivist, to use primary source documents to celebrate Dale Chihuly's connection with Western New York.

Did you know that Dale Chihuly had a connection with Western New York? It's true! (If you did know this, give yourself a high-five)! In 1975, Chihuly and another artist named Sever Leslie collaborated on a project where they installed thin panes of colored stained glass throughout the natural environment in a variety of ways--floating on the water, jutting out from rock faces, or in grids of stained glass near the water, where the light could shine through and illuminate the panes. As with so much at Artpark, these projects were intended to be ephemeral, and thus the only documentation we have of many of these incredibly innovative and avant-garde artist's projects now live in the Artpark Archive at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

It felt so good to have an opportunity to share these archival materials with the public. The Burchfield Penney Art Center acquired the Artpark Archive in the summer of 2013, but the process of bringing all of the collection into the museum has taken over a year. The collection includes 180 boxes of programming materials, contracts, newspaper clippings, and other records, as well as approximately 100,000 images in the form of slides, negatives, and contact sheets documenting the 40-year history of Artpark's many diverse workshops, performances, and environmental art installations. These materials were previously housed in three locations: some materials were at Artpark, some were at Fort Niagara, and some were at the University of Buffalo since their 2010 exhibition Artpark: 1974-1984. Needless to say, it's been a huge project not only getting the whole collection to the museum, and then figuring out what exactly the collection includes, and all of it is still in the works. The image collection is the most obvious gem, and was originally organized in binders by year, program, event, etc. Unfortunately, the binders were in rough shape by the time they came to the Center, so last year I had some of our amazing interns working on rehousing the slides, negatives, and contact sheets in archival polyethylene sleeves in acid-free boxes--though this project is not complete, they have spent a total of 300 hours rehousing 60,000 images to date. Thanks to all of their work, I was able to easily identify the images from 1975, and began looking there for images of Chihuly there. This involved holding up each sheet of negatives up to the light, and trying to identify Chihuly's project. Eventually I found some images of Chihuly and Leslie creating one of the installations, and was able to digitize the negatives and put them on our new iPads so people could scroll through the images at the event--it was way more engaging (and less wasteful!) than printing out the pictures! High five for portable technology, allowing archival content to boldly go where no materials have ever gone before (i.e.--out of the archives)!

I had a wonderful time participating in the educational activities at the Buffalo Philharmonic Opera, and was thrilled to get to talk to people about the incredible and continuing impact of Artpark on Western New York....and it warmed my lil'archivist heart to know that these fantastic materials documenting this component of our history were now secured, and celebrated, at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.