It's going to be a while before the Albright-Knox Art Gallery re-opens as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in the new year, but the gallery is recruiting those crucial people who will take visitors around and talk about the art.
They are called docents. They can explain to visitors, like school kids, what they are seeing and how it fits into the art of humanity.
School and Docent Program Coordinator Lindsay Kranz said the gallery is looking to roughly double the ranks of current docents, from the current group with just over 40 members.
"We are looking to diversify our program," Krantz said. "We are very happy that by expanding, it will allow us to really diversify our docent corps, so that our docents more closely reflect our visitors and community. So when we re-open as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, we want everyone in our community to feel welcome and to feel like they belong."
Kranz said the current docent corps is almost completely female, so she's looking for more men, non-binary people and everyone else who can fit the educational effort around a day job, teaching nights and weekends.
"Folks who are excited to engage people with the museum's collection and whatever we have on view in special exhibitions," she said. "So you have to kind of like a desire to help educate people, but more that they like to be creative in the way that they engage with the art."
There's a Jan. 10 deadline for applications. Weekly classes for chosen new docents will start in April and continue into September.
