Collection Handbook

A thoughtful selection of works which celebrates the opening of the new Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and provides a flavor of one of the world’s most extraordinary collections of modern and contemporary art.

With nearly 400 pages, this entirely new collection handbook presents over 330 works by 265 artists, arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically, and is the premier souvenir publication for museum visitors and art lovers alike.

In late 2019 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery broke new ground on the most significant campus expansion and development project in its 160-year history, reopening in 2023 as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. The Museum’s collections span some of the greatest moments in art through the centuries, beginning with its first acquisition, The Marina Piccola, Capri, 1859, by Albert Bierstadt―both the first painting and the first work gifted by an artist to enter the museum’s collection. Impressionism and post-Impressionism are well represented with works by leading nineteenth-century European artists such as Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh. Cubism, Surrealism, Constructivism, and other movements from the revolutionary early years of the 20th century come to life through significant works by Georges Braque, André Derain, Frida Kahlo, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, and Alexander Rodchenko.

Cathleen Chaffee, PhD Charles Balbach Chief Curator, joined the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in January 2014 and has been chief curator since September 2017.

Pam Hatley is head of publications & digital experience, Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

Holly E. Hughes is Godin-Spaulding Senior Curator for the Collection at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

Janne Sirén is the Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York.