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March 7, 2008
Grachos on audience, tourism
On Wednesday I expressed my displeasure with Albright-Knox director Louis Grachos for saying that the A-K's goal was to find "a world-renowned architect to design an extraordinary building that will attract visitors from all over the world." I said that museum directors should stop pointing to tourism as a rationale for whatever they do. A museum's most important audience is is its hometown crowd.
I asked Grachos about that. "I totally hear you and I understand what you're saying," he said. "But look at the legacy of architecture in Buffalo. It's a phenomenal city. Frank Lloyd Wright wrote about the Darwin Martin House as his opus. The Louis Sullivan building is a phenomenally important late 19thC building and the Saarinens' building for the Buffalo Philharmonic is personally my favorite building. The concert hall is -- you just want to be in the building it's so beautifully done. The H. H. Richardson tower is certainly an icon in Buffalo, so there's a real legacy of important architects who have done important buildings in Buffalo. And so I think our collection is a very important modern and contemporary collection. And I think that warrants an important architect. We hope there is an architectural legacy in Buffalo and we want people to realize that."
Grachos never said this directly to me, but the sense I got was this: The path to state and possibly other government money for a new Albright building is through regional cultural promotion, and so that's how he's going to talk about the A-K's need.
Posted March 7, 2008 8:52 AM
