arts in revolution
It’s happening right before our eyes. From the dramatically altered Buffalo Albright Knox Gundlach Campus, to new galleries and creative art spaces, from an influx of young artists coming to Buffalo and expats returning home, to emerging younger and edgier collectors, art is on the move in new, innovative, and even revolutionary ways.
Among the leaders of this revolution are the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York, and its Interim Executive Director, Scott Propeack. Since his appointment, Propeack has been pushing a no-holds-barred revisioning of the Burchfield Penney’s mission, redefining preconceptions and historical norms of what art means, how it is seen, and how we are to interact with it.
As I talked with community leaders about the arts, the term “revolution” kept coming up in conversation, so I asked Scott his thoughts on how this term described the rapidly changing arts landscape.
“As an arts center, our role is unique in our community,” Propeack says. “With an arts center, compared to a museum, we have a real-time link to the community. Enhancing and growing this link is built into everything we do. This means promoting the livelihoods of artists and supporting how they’re pushing boundaries. We’re integral to that process in a way that no museum is in Western New York. These really are revolutionary times, filled with a dynamic art scene like I’ve never seen before. And the Burchfield Penney has a front-row seat to the action.”
One way that the arts are changing is by bringing art from museum to sidewalk, so to speak, and in doing so providing more new and interesting access points for the arts audience.
“I feel the accelerating growth of Buffalo and the region is primed for the inclusion of a broad range of voices in almost unlimited creative venues. The Burchfield Penney recognizes this and will be a key force in driving this forward. Economic success and inclusion are about decentralization–moving art to the people, wherever the people are, and not expecting the people to come to the art, where it has traditionally been. Moving art from traditional spaces to new venues will be essential to our success and needs to be ingrained into our DNA,” Propeack elaborated.
One of the challenges in achieving that goal is reconciling the Burchfield Penney’s innovative and decentralized goals with its building, created in 2008. An essential question for the Burchfield Penney to consider will be how to combine their vision with their physical space, which has been at the heart of the Burchfield Penney.
“Our home was the first museum built in Buffalo in a century,” Propeack says. “The process of envisioning and then creating it enabled us to really challenge ourselves on how the future will define museums and how we might refine and evolve that definition to fit our core mission. Although a state-of-the-art building provides an amazing box, it’s still a box.
“Innovation is how we work in it and, more importantly, beyond it. The collections, exhibitions, and activities we work on belong to the public and we’ll define our activities through this lens, tearing apart the historic ‘shrine’ position of museums in necessary ways to better serve the public. This will be achieved by inviting more and new voices into our curatorial process. Opening our vaults for tours and maintaining a quick-response gallery space specifically for first-time museum exhibitions or emerging artists is also very important. I think that being the link between emerging regional artists and the broader art audience is a defining role for the Burchfield Penney. I’m excited to reinterpret the balance between museum as nexus and museum as purveyor of arts in our community.”
It seems that no matter the media, the current arts revolution is really about taking unprecedented risks and chances, while at the same time making sure that long-standing community relationships are stronger than ever. Maintaining this balance will present both opportunities and challenges to institutions like the Burchfield Penney.
“Limiting community engagement to an on-site museum only is an out-of-date practice,”Propeack expands. “Throughout our region, there are many partners looking to bring art into their neighborhoods. Our partners in the arts have already established public art programs on the streets. The Burchfield Penney’s focus on public art will be aligned with our gallery work and create innovative spaces for the presentation of exhibitions. For example, this is something that we have done for almost 20 years with a singular public exhibition space at M&T Bank. Moving forward, we’ll be intentional about expanding these types of partnerships. My role as interim director will be to continue to push the envelope. Essential to our role in the community is to challenge preconceptions, reinterpret and reinvent them. This will be good for the Burchfield Penney as an institution, the artists that we give voices to, and the present and future art audiences that we serve.”