Friday night is the official public opening of Albright-Knox Northland. It’s a temporary home for the art museum while its Elmwood Avenue campus is closed for construction through spring 2022.The first exhibit in the new space is called “Domestic Thresholds” and features work by Heather Hart, Edra Soto and the late Buffalo artist Rodney Taylor.
Albright-Knox Curator of Public Art Aaron Ott explains more about the dominant piece in the exhibit: a life-size rooftop that visitors are welcomed to climb on and underneath.
“In all of Heather’s work, there’s that sort of participatory and interactive elements,” Ott said. “What I’ve found is that there is a lot of people who have never been on a rooftop and this will be their first rooftop experience. For other people, it brings them back to a time when they were on a rooftop for whatever reasons they were on a rooftop. There’s also an interior to this space. There’s an interactive element on the inside. Sort of a space for reflection. A space for dialogue.”
The new site, which is located on Buffalo’s East Side, appropriately features the work of the late local artist Rodney Taylor. Ott said Taylor’s death last month was a huge loss for Buffalo’s artistic community.
“A lot of the house structures, the home structures that you see depicted in his paintings are inspired by the homes that he could see from his window or that he could view along his walks along Fillmore Avenue or along the East Side,” Ott said. “This is the first posthumous exhibition of his work and while that is a very sad occasion, it’s an opportunity for people to see the incredible talent that he had.”
Click HERE to check on hours and events at the new facility
