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Sep 14, 2023

Complete coverage: AK360 expansion at the Albright

As the AK360 expansion nears its end phase at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery,

As the AK360 expansion nears its end phase at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, take a look back on all of The Buffalo News' coverage of the massive project, from photo galleries to funding announcements to inside looks at the construction in progress.

The AK360 expansion is nearing its end phase at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery on Elmwood Avenue. Buffalo News Chief Photographer Derek Gee rec…

With supply chain delays easing, construction workers at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery have been installing the steel frames that will hold the glass curtain wall in the three-story, semi-transparent Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building being erected along Elmwood Avenue.

Across the campus, the steel frame for "Common Sky," the sculptural canopy being installed at the 1962 Seymour H. Knox Building is being welded together, sanded and painted. The glazing, which includes translucent and reflective glass for a kaleidoscopic effect, is expected to be completed in July.

A worker is dwarfed by the intricately patterned steel frame of "Common Sky" designed by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and German architect Sebastian Behmann of Studio Other Spaces, which is under construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. The glass canopy will cover a 6,000-square-foot civic space where an enclosed courtyard used to be.

Those are the most visible changes now occurring on the Albright-Knox campus after slowed construction due to the supply chain issues forced the time frame for completion to change from this fall to the first half of 2023.

"The campus of the future Buffalo AKG Art Museum is really going to take shape this summer," said Jamie Robideau, the museum's director of facilities planning and management, referring to the name of the museum that will be used when the facility reopens. "All major elements of the project are now happening simultaneously."

About 60% of the glass for the new Gundlach Building is in Western New York, with the remainder in transport or still to be fabricated. The building, designed by Shohei Shigematsu, allows the museum to more than double its exhibition space. An indoor sculpture terrace will encircle the main galleries, providing a 360-degree wraparound view of the surrounding landscape.

On the grounds in front of the museum, the underground parking garage is near completion and will be covered in the coming months with a half-acre of lawn.

The sculptural canopy for the 1962 Knox Building that will cover 6,042 square feet of community space was assembled in Germany, taken apart and shipped across the Atlantic for reassembly and installation.

Workers in a giant lift guide a piece of steel into place as the curtain wall surrounding the new Gundlach Building under construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery on Wednesday, June 8, 2022.

Over the coming months, a terrazzo floor will be installed in the Knox Building, which will house a restaurant, five classrooms and 2,000 square feet of exhibition space.

In the 1905 Robert and Elisabeth Wilmers Building, wood floors are being installed in most of the galleries, replacing the less durable red marble that was damaged over time.

Many of the marble tiles were damaged because marble cracks under weight, Robideau said. With modern art becoming progressively heavier, in addition to the weight of the machines used to install it, the change was necessary, he said. The white and green marble in the sculpture court will be restored.

The frame for the John J. Albright Bridge connecting the Gundlach Building with the Wilmers Building is under construction, with concrete expected to be poured later this summer. The walls will be glass and the ceiling illuminated with a lighting panel.

"As visitors traverse the Albright bridge, they will enjoy new views of Jaume Plensa's sculpture 'Laura,' the Wilmers Building, Hoyt Lake and the Gundlach Building," Robideau said.

The bridge will allow an ADA-compliant path for visitors to move between buildings without going outside, and improve the museum's ability to handle and transport valuable artwork. Roof, masonry and drainage repairs to the building are being finished, with plans to re-create the grand staircase later this summer.

All of the exterior work should be done by fall, Robideau said, with interior work completed over the winter months, leaving landscaping as the last step of the project.

Funding concerns were allayed last month when Gov. Kathy Hochul announced $20 million in the state budget to cover the added expenses that arose from the construction delays and price increases.

Janne Siren, the museum's director, led a fundraising campaign that met the earlier projected cost of $168 million, $65 million of it from Gundlach.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery's pursuit of funds to pay for its expansion is over, thanks to an infusion from the new state budget, and the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens moved much closer to reaching its fundraising goal.

The funds are among $82 million dedicated to Erie County cultural organizations.

"The $20 million that has been allotted for construction of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum brings us to the finish line of our capital campaign," said Janne Sirén, Albright-Knox's director. "Moreover, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York State's substantial support for other cultural organizations will have a profound and lasting impact on some of our most treasured institutions."

The state set aside $9 million for the Buffalo Zoo and $8 million for Kleinhans Music Hall to pay for deferred maintenance and repairs. Plus, $5 million will help build the Hispanic Heritage Cultural Institute on the West Side.

Upstate theaters, community arts organizations and museums are also eligible for $60 million later in the year in state funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a $20 million increase from a year ago. Upstate will also receive an additional $4 million for zoos, botanical gardens and aquariums from the State Environmental Protection Fund.

Also, a public market, concerts and food stalls could be coming to the long-idled DL&W Terminal in a few years, thanks to $30 million from the state budget.

Reuse of the DL&W Terminal has been a long time coming.

The lower floor serves as Metro Rail's Yard and Shops complex, but the second floor has been vacant since the last Erie-Lackawanna passenger train left the station in 1962.

After $52 million in preliminary improvements, the NFTA will now use the $30 million to repair and restore the train shed's second floor.

Plans call for covered skylights to be revealed and bricked windows to once again see the light of day. Improved access is planned to the second floor and better walkability around the site. Structural repairs and making the site ADA-accessible are also on the drawing board.

The price tag for all of the work, said developer Sam Savarino, is $30 million – the amount the state is providing.

Savarino, working with Project for Public Spaces – which created the "cheaper, lighter, quicker" concept used at Canalside – envisions an 8,000- to 10,000- square-foot public market, along with artists studios, food stalls and a moveable stage for concerts and special events.

"Our intent is to make a public space in the size and scale and characteristics of great and successful public places in other communities," Savarino said.

There's a need for a music venue between the 400-capacity Buffalo Iron Works music club, which Savarino owns, and the planned 8,000-capacity amphitheater at the Outer Harbor, he said.

Savarino said weekly concerts that used to be downtown have left a void he'd like to fill in the summer on the site's 40,000-square-foot outdoor deck, which he said could probably fit 4,000 to 5,000 people, as well as inside on a more limited basis. He wants festivals and special events, too.

"There's a big hole in the middle," he said. "One of the things missing from what used to be Thursday at the Square and the Canalside Concerts is a place with easy entry and an easy place to meet other people at."

Savarino expects to open the second floor of the DL&W Terminal in 2025.

Answer to an appeal

The state's total contribution to the Albright-Knox expansion has now reached $42.3 million, and the state budget answered Sirén's appeal to complete the project after the museum raised $168 million. That fundraising included $65 million from billionaire and native Snyder resident Jeffrey Gundlach, the largest philanthropic gift in Western New York history.

The centerpiece of the expansion is a three-story glass building designed by architect Shohei Shigematsu that will allow the Albright-Knox to more than double the amount of artwork viewed at one time. The museum, which will reopen as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, is scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2023 after enduring delays and rising costs due to pandemic-related supply chain holdups.

Estimates to complete the planned expansion of the Botanical Gardens have also suffered from steep price increases, said Mark Mortenson, the Botanical Gardens' president and chief executive officer.

A decision to have the site reduce its energy and carbon footprint by becoming LEED certified is also adding to the increased cost, he said.

The plan's focal point calls for a large glass building on the southwest side of the conservatory designed by Toshiko Mori.

"With this investment, it is clear we are going to be able to achieve our largest expansion in over a century to better serve the Western New York community," Mortenson said.

State funds will also bring the Hispanic Heritage Cultural Institute closer to becoming reality, said Casimiro Rodriguez, project chairman and founder of the Hispanic Council of Western New York.

The project has now raised $11 million, he said, though he is also seeking an additional $4.5 million in operating funds for the building's first three years.

"We are close to the goal posts," Rodriguez said. "Now we hope the City of Buffalo can come through to help us close the gap and furnish the building."

Rodriguez said the planned three-story, 33,000-square-foot building at the corner of Niagara and Hudson streets will include an activities hall, a 150-seat theater, museum, art gallery, learning labs and media and broadcasting center.

A 2020 assessment of the Buffalo Zoo's aging buildings determined there was $25 million in deferred infrastructure needs, including decades-old roofs, poorly conditioned heating and air circulation systems and ignored plumbing needs.

The $9 million provided by the state gets the zoo more than one-third of the way to its goal, with four years still left in its five-year plan to raise the remaining funds.

A 2020 study of Kleinhans Music Hall identified $15 million worth of improvements. After the state's $8 million contribution, that lowers the amount needed to $5 million.

The 1940 building needs a new roof, HVAC upgrades, a new boiler and new management system for controlling heat and air flow.

A new liner for the reflecting pool, refinishing the stage, modernizing the kitchen, repairing water-damaged walls in the Mary Seaton Room and installing energy-efficient lighting are also priorities.

Construction of a kaleidoscopic canopy of transparent and mirrored glass is expected to start this week at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

The sculpture, known as "Common Sky," will cover a 6,000-square-foot civic space coming to the Seymour H. Knox Building. It's expected to take three months to complete.

A semi-transparent, three-story building on the northeast end of the campus – shown here in a rendering – will double exhibition space and serve as the main entrance to the new gallery.

The canopy, designed by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and German architect Sebastian Behmann of Studio Other Spaces, is one of the museum's most significant additions in the expansion now underway. The centerpiece is a three-story semi-transparent building being built on the northern end of the campus, which will allow the museum to more than double its exhibition space and will serve as the new entrance.

"This is a significant milestone in the construction of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum," said Janne Sirén, the museum's director. "Common Sky is an artistic landmark and a source of inspiration that will draw visitors from across Western New York and around the world."

The Albright-Knox will officially be renamed the Buffalo AKG Art Museum when it's expected to reopen in spring 2023. "AKG" stands for Albright-Knox arts patrons John J. Albright, Seymour H. Knox Jr. and the addition of a new name – Jeffrey E. Gundlach. He has given $65 million to the project, the largest philanthropic gift in Western New York history.

How much money will be left in the state budget for other cultural organizations, even with state government flush with money this year?

Fabrication of Common Sky began in Petersberg, Germany, in July 2021 by the company Hahner Technik. The sculpture was assembled and welded together under Eliasson's oversight. It was then taken apart in segments for transport by ship to North America, and then to Buffalo, where it will be reassembled.

Common sky's frame is a double-layered, domed steel structure composed of primed and painted structural steel. It will contain 490 triangular panes of glass, 147 of them partially mirror coated.

Eliasson's sculptural fusions of artwork and architecture often deal with the presence or absence of light. His installations include a series of monumental waterfalls in New York Harbor, and a project in which he dyed large sections of rivers green with environmentally safe dye in Norway, Los Angeles, Stockholm and Tokyo.

The installation of interlocking glass panels he's created for the Albright-Knox is intended to integrate the indoors with the outdoors, with a funnel that represents, in part, the turbulent snow and rain known to Western New York.

Eliasson has described Common Sky as an "expansive sculpture through which visitors experience the constant motion of the surrounding natural environment."

"We at the Albright talk about the transformative nature of art, and it is a truth of this exhibition," Aaron Ott said. "This exhibition, right now, is absolutely electric with work."

The new civic space will be located where a sculpture garden had been in the Gordon Bunshaft-designed 1962 building, which houses the museum's auditorium. The Knox building will be free to the public and include a 2,000-square-foot gallery, five classrooms, a restaurant and a museum shop.

Callie Johnson, Albright-Knox's director of communications and community engagement, said the new civic space will anchor community engagement programming she hopes will be a catalyst in bringing a more diverse mix of people through the museum's doors.

"When it opens, the Buffalo AKG will be a more welcoming and more accessible institution," Johnson said. "Members of the public will be able to use the space and engage with the museum's resources in a beautiful new structure that reflects the beauty of Delaware Park."

The museum also announced that Charlie Garling has been hired as the director of learning and creativity. He will be responsible for developing and implementing new educational programing and outreach.

Garling was formerly director of studio programs at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

It is easy to see the progress of the Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building two years into construction on the Albright-Knox Art Gallery grounds – with a 38-foot-high entrance gallery and exhibit space on the third floor bigger than any before at the museum.

A view of the spiral staircase surrounding the main lobby inside the new Gundlach Building under construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director Janne Siren stands in what will become the massive sculpture gallery as he gives a tour inside the new Gundlach Building under construction.

A worker hangs drywall in one of the massive gallery spaces inside the new Gundlach Building.

The area where historic steps will be restored to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director Janne Siren stands in what will become a gallery entrance as he gives a tour inside the new Gundlach Building.

Workers build the mold for the concrete underground parking ramp in a view from the new Gundlach Building under construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

A view from the new Gundlach Building under construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery where an elevated glass bridge will wind around the trees and connect to the existing campus.

The steel frames of columns that will support an elevated glass walkway that will connect the new Gundlach Building to the existing campus.

Detail of new roofing atop the original building.

A view inside the largest of the gallery spaces inside the new Gundlach Building.

A worker warms up next to a heater used to keep the construction site warm inside the new Gundlach Building.

Workers and building materials fill one of the gallery spaces inside the new Gundlach Building.

Electrical conduit inside the new Gundlach Building.

Janne Siren stands in what will become the massive sculpture gallery as he gives a tour inside the new Gundlach Building under construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

A view of the curved staircase that will wind down to the main entrance inside the new Gundlach Building.

A view inside the new Gundlach Building.

A worker on a lift installs insulation over the complex system of ducts inside the new Gundlach Building.

Janne Siren takes in the view from the small balcony on the north side of the new Gundlach Building.

A view from inside the new Gundlach Building.

A view of the curved staircase that will wind down to the main entrance inside the new Gundlach Building.

Workers build the mold for the concrete underground parking ramp in a view from new Gundlach Building.

A view of the new Gundlach Building and the attached underground parking ramp.

A view of a stairwell that will offer incredible views in addition to connecting levels inside the new Gundlach Building.

The new underground parking lot under construction in front of the original building, where a historic staircase will be rebuilt.

Workers install walls inside the new Gundlach Building.

The view across what will be the sculpture court inside the new Gundlach Building.

But here's what you don't see: 540 exterior glass panels still in Lithuania and 260 tons of structural steel in Germany needed to encase the new three-story translucent building before the museum reopens as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

Covid-19-related supply chain problems have delayed their arrival, and that means the reopening that had been planned for late this year will now be put off to the first half of 2023, said Janne Siren, the museum's director.

The disruption and higher shipping costs have also driven up project costs between $12 million and $20 million, he said.

Museum Director Janne Siren voiced optimism about governments unloosening their purse strings, as the pandemic recedes, and the community's response to Jeffrey Gundlach's $2.5 million matching grant offer.

So even after the museum met its ambitious $168 million fundraising goal, Siren is now looking to state government for more financial help. New York State has already contributed $22.3 million toward the project – 13% of the funds raised.

"It is not possible for even the most dedicated fundraising team to complete this task if the government doesn't step up to the plate," Siren said. "We feel it is reasonable for us to turn to the government for Covid-related funds because the government will be the greatest beneficiary of this project."

The museum closed in November 2019, and work on the Shohei Shigematsu-designed Gundlach building began in January 2019. The supply chain problems didn't emerge until the fall.

Siren said the timing of the Gundlach Building work also depends on the weather.

The glass panels will come in different sizes, with the largest having a length of 26 feet and weighing 4,000 pounds.

"Putting it together in itself is a complex operation," Siren said. "Sealing the glass to the metal frame is something that cannot be done if the temperature is too low for the sealant to do its work.

Hundreds of people were in attendance Sunday, all of them among the 5,000 people projected to visit the Albright-Knox during its closing weekend, according to the

"If we had a very mild winter, which it doesn't look like right now, it can speed things up," Siren said. "But otherwise, it will slow the work down."

The good news, he said, is that renovations to the Knox and Wilmers buildings are on schedule.

Back to 1905 glory

The new building's second-story wrap-around sculpture terrace offers striking views of the museum's other buildings, especially the E.B. Green-designed 1905 building, now named for Robert and Elisabeth Wilmers.

The marble in the neoclassical structure was cleaned to eliminate decades-old dirt – the first thorough scrubbing since 1962.

The 1905 building has a new roof for the first time since it opened, with a seafoam green color chosen to resemble the previous patina copper.

More than 100 small ornamental lion heads that form a circular pattern above the building's hemicycle were also taken down, repaired and restored.

"The building looks sensational," Siren said. "It is now back to its original 1905 glory."

The grand staircase – removed at the time of the 1962 Gordon Bunshaft-designed addition, now known as the Seymour H. Knox Building – will be recreated later this year.

The fire lane outside the Wilmers Building will remain, but beyond it will be a lawn covering an underground 80-vehicle parking garage for museum visitors. The pouring of the garage roof is expected as early as next month, also depending on the weather.

Support structures outline the path for the curvy, glassed-in John J. Albright Bridge that will connect the Wilmers and Gundlach buildings.

The $168 million expansion project broke ground on Nov. 22, 2019, and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2022.

'Scale is enormous'

All of the Gundlach Building gallery spaces have been designed to be flexible for different shows and installations.

Six galleries with terrazzo floors on the first floor total 7,115 square feet. That includes a 1,200-square-foot glass box gallery with movable seating for projected media works and a nearly three-story-high multifunction gallery with a skylight overhead.

"The scale is enormous," Siren said. "There is no other indoor art space of this height in Western New York."

Two freight elevators for the movement of artwork are located away from the public. The elevator on the east side of the building will allow trucks to back up from Iroquois Drive to unload crated paintings, sculptures or installations, which will be lowered to an art handling area in the basement.

The other elevator will transport the artwork to the upper floors of the Gundlach Building or for transport across the bridge to the Wilmers and Knox buildings.

The second floor, though laid out differently, also has six galleries that can be reconfigured with movable walls and an identical amount of exhibit space.

The third floor has two gallery spaces, with the largest spanning 7,530 square feet – bigger than two tennis courts.

"This gallery will give that freedom for curators and artists to have space in which to realize their most wildest dreams that require space," Siren said.

A mezzanine level located between the first and second floors in one corner of the building provides office space.

The second floor sculpture terrace will allow visitors to see the Buffalo History Museum, Delaware Park and Scajaquada Creek from new vantage points, as will the third floor's glass-enclosed Juliet balcony.

. "You can visualize the campus and cityscape from new angles that are totally unprecedented," Siren said.

Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director Janne Siren stands in what will become the massive sculpture gallery as he gives a tour inside the new Gundlach Building under construction.

The view will also allow visitors to catch a glimpse of "Common Sky," a glass artwork designed by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann and now being assembled in Germany. A freighter crossing the Atlantic will deliver the artwork in over 50 shipping containers, and it will be reassembled and installed in April at the museum's indoor Town Square.

Climate control

The Albright-Knox's engine room is in the Gundlach Building's sub-basement, where a dozen large air handling units delivered by crane last year are part of the climate control system for the entire campus.

"The complexity of everything that lives above lives down here," Siren said.

The system ensures that air temperature and humidity in each of the galleries and back-of-house art spaces meet museum standards.

Visitors who use the parking garage, one level up, will also be able to enter the museum through the basement lobby. There will be ticketing staff and coat check, lockers and bathrooms.

Workers build the mold for the concrete underground parking ramp in a view from the new Gundlach Building under construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

The entire space will be engulfed in a work of art by Swedish artist Miriam Backstrom, just as entering the Town Square will bring visitors into contact with "Common Sky."

"Go to any fancy museum, with the possible exception of the Guggenheim, and the lobby is a transactional, boring space that you want to get out of as fast as possible," Siren said. "This is really something no other museum has done, to my knowledge."

Economic impact

Siren said an economic impact study by the University at Buffalo Regional Institute demonstrates the project's economic value to New York State.

An architectural model depicts the glass-walled addition to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

The study found tax, tourism, employment and other benefits generated by the museum within two years of reopening will more than offset even the high-end estimate of $20 million needed to complete the project.

The study also found the construction benefit between 2020 and 2022 alone is expected to generate an economic impact of $281 million for New York State.

"We've never asked for more than what's reasonable, and we believe it is in balance with the economic ratio studies," Siren said. "For us to now somehow think we are going to raise an extra $15 million from private sources in Western New York is a pipedream.

"People have given generously," Siren said. "But it is now time for the government to look at this project, step up to the plate and finish it."

Anthony McCall's "Dark Rooms, Solid Light" exhibition is the last exhibit before the museum closes for more than two years during the $160 million expansion

Siren has had success fundraising in Europe, where 53 people – only three of whom traveled to Buffalo – gave $8.7 million. He hopes to increase the total to $10 million.

"I think a lot of people in Western New York know the Albright-Knox and regard it as an important museum, but they do not know the global importance of this museum," Siren said.

The $8.7 million raised in Europe is more than the funds raised from individuals in Western New York, excluding the contributions of Albright-Knox board members.

Local fundraising is more difficult because fewer philanthropies and large corporations are based in Buffalo than in other cities with major art museums, including Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Siren said.

Another factor is cultural, he said.

"That notion of culture being instrumental in defining who we are and being a glue that holds society together is not something that is generally as prevalent in the U.S.," he said, drawing a contrast to Europe. "So to just point a finger at Buffalo and Western New York wouldn't be fair."

Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director Janne Siren stands in what will become a gallery entrance as he gives a tour inside the new Gundlach Building.

Siren said he's learned to embrace the project's unpredictability.

"When you get into a project like this, you have to have a little bit of a paratrooper's mindset in the sense that you never know what you're jumping into," said Siren, a Finnish native who enlisted at age 28 in the Finnish Army's Utti Jaeger Regiment, a special forces unit.

The museum's reopening next year, he predicted, will be a big moment for Western New York and beyond.

"It will be one of the biggest curtain calls that the art world has seen in a post-Covid world," Siren said. "Even those of us who work here have never seen this amount of art shown at one time."

Take a tour over the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where construction is underway on a massive new campus expansion that will double the amount of the gallery's world-renowned collection that can be on display. The gallery will reopen in 2022 as the Buffalo AKG Art Gallery.

The massive AK360 Campus Expansion project is progressing on schedule as the new Gundlach Building, which will more than double the amount of …

As a crane lifted the last steel beam into place Wednesday on the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's new building, money continued to come into the museum's treasury to meet a patron's $2.5 million challenge grant.

Some $1 million has been pledged in the three weeks since Jeffrey Gundlach made the matching grant offer, said Janne Siren, the museum's director.

The final steel beam is lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

The museum needs to raise $1.5 million more for the latest matching grant effort to succeed. If successful, that would leave $10.5 million still to raise, but with a $5 million pledge from the Cuomo administration, a $2.5 million pledge from the City of Buffalo and the pandemic receding, Siren is optimistic government funds are coming.

"If the government monies come in and we make this match, we'll be nearly at the finish line," Siren said.

The final steel beam is lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Benefactor Jeffrey E. Gundlach speaks before the final steel beam is lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Workers sign their names on the final steel beam before it is lifted to the top of the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

A worker carefully affixes the rigging to the final steel beam before it is lifted to the top of the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Ironworkers Josh Elliott, left, and Pat Kelly of Contour Steel Erectors dressed for the occasion as they wait for the final steel beam to be lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Ironworker Clint Crouse of Contour Steel Erectors guides the final steel beam into position atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Buildin, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Workers look on as the final steel beam is lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

The final steel beam is lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Ironworker Clint Crouse of Contour Steel Erectors gestures to the crane operator as the final steel beam is lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion.

Albright-Knox Director Janne Siren speaks during the topping out ceremony for the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Workers carefully affix the rigging to the final steel beam before it is lifted to the top of the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building during a topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Shohei Shigematsu, the lead architect for the AK360 project, center, applauds during the topping out ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame of the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

A worker on scaffolding pauses to take a photograph as State Sen. Sean Ryan speaks during the topping out ceremony for the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks during the topping out ceremony for the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Benefactor Jeffrey E. Gundlach speaks before the final steel beam is lifted into place atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

A construction worker is visible through the tangle of steel atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Ironworkers affix the final steel beam into position atop the Albright-Knox's new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, which is under construction amid the gallery's AK360 campus expansion, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

Benefactor Jeffrey E. Gundlach and Barbara Van Every chat with Shohei Shigematsu, the lead architect for the AK360 project, after a ceremony to mark the completion of the steel frame of the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, Wednesday, July 7, 2021.

In addition, Rep. Brian Higgins has a $1 million request before the House Appropriations Committee to pay for the nearly 1-acre lawn that will replace a surface parking lot and cover an underground parking garage now under construction.

Together, the three government payouts would account for $8.5 million, leaving just $2 million more to be raised.

Other funding sources are also being pursued, Siren said.

Siren said he was encouraged by the community's response to Gundlach's matching grant offer.

"It was incredible to see how fast the community reacted," Siren said.

Museum officials, staff, supporters and political leaders gathered for the topping out ceremony Wednesday for the new structure, to be called the Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building.

Gundlach pledged a $42.5 million challenge grant in September 2016 for the museum expansion, setting a record in Western New York for the largest private contribution to a cultural institution. The bond trader and investor pledged $10 million more in November 2017, another $10 million in November 2019 and now $2.5 million, assuming the challenge grant is met.

With the steel frame in place, Gilbane Building Co. will begin pouring concrete floors in the Gundlach Building. Installation of the glass walls is expected to follow in the fall.

"This is a remarkable moment," Siren said. "Much work remains to be done in the coming year, but the topping out of the Gundlach Building is a potent symbol of just how far we have come since breaking ground in November 2019."

Time lapse video shows workers installing structural steel at the new AKG Art Museum, Friday, May 14, 2021.

The expanded museum, at a cost of $168 million, is expected to reopen in fall 2022, three years since the museum closed in November 2019. When it reopens, the museum will become known as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. AKG stands for the museum's major contributors: John J. Albright, Seymour H. Knox Jr. and Jeffrey E. Gundlach.

Siren praised County Executive Mark Poloncarz for paying the county's $5 million pledge last summer, even as Covid-19 raged.

"That took leadership to do that in July 2020," Siren said. "It solidified our board's belief in the project at a time when the world was surrounded by a pandemic."

Poloncarz said he honored the county's commitment knowing it would help move the project along and keep people working.

A new report by UB Regional Institute concludes the construction of the new campus has already brought significant economic benefits for the city, region and state.

The project supports 1,827 jobs, with construction over three years expected to generate an economic impact of $281 million for the state, $168 million for the county and $36 million for the city, the report found.

The report said 84% of the construction money is being spent in New York State, with 52% in Erie County and 21% in Buffalo.

"Every dollar invested in the construction of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum generates twice as much in total economic impact for New York State," the report said.

Annual economic impacts of the expanded museum are projected from $36 million to $47 million. At least 134 full-time employees are anticipated when the museum reopens, and an increase of 80,000 visitors are predicted that would project annual visitation between 185,000 and 205,000, about 40% from out of town, the report said.

An estimated $3 million to $4 million in local and state taxes are expected to be collected.

The semi-transparent building being erected on the northern end of the campus, along Elmwood Avenue, will allow the museum to more than double its exhibition space and serve as the new entrance.

An updated rendering of the new building at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

The new building calls for an indoor sculpture terrace that will encircle the main galleries and provide a 360-degree wraparound view of the surrounding landscape.

A bridge will connect the new North Building and E.B. Green's historic 1905 building, and improve the museum's ability to handle and transport valuable artwork. The building is undergoing roof, masonry and drainage repairs and re-creation of the grand staircase.

The 1962 Gordon Bunshaft addition will be used for educational purposes and exhibition space, and a 6,000-square-foot community space will be marked by a "Common Sky" sculptural canopy.

The steel frame is complete for the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery continues its massive AK360 campus expan…

Jeffrey Gundlach is at it again.

The billionaire bond trader and investor who grew up in Snyder announced a community challenge grant on Twitter that, if matched, would raise his total contribution for the new Buffalo AKG Art Museum to $65 million.

"All steel required to complete the Buffalo AKG North Building is scheduled for the first week of July," Gundlach tweeted. "Buffalo Fine Arts Academy is planning a ceremony to celebrate this milestone. I now pledge an additional $2.5 million to the capital campaign if it is matched by the community."

Gundlach's tweet on Tuesday caught Albright-Knox Art Gallery officials by surprise, and it prompted them to launch a public campaign later in the day.

"This is a very welcome surprise," said Jillian Jones, the museum's director of advancement. "Jeffrey likes to get things done and so do we, so we're happy for the opportunity."

The capital campaign so far has raised $152.5 million toward the $168 million construction cost. If Gundlach's matching grant is met – museum officials have full confidence it will – that would leave $10.5 million still needed to reach the museum's fundraising goal.

Time lapse video shows workers installing structural steel at the new AKG Art Museum, Friday, May 14, 2021.

"What Jeffrey is doing is unprecedented," Jones said. "We could never have imagined when we started this project that a single person would have moved the ball so far down the field, and really expand the scope of our imagination in what we could provide for Buffalo in the future.

"Jeffrey has done that," Jones said. "He's allowed us to dream big."

Gundlach pledged a $42.5 million challenge grant in September 2016 for the museum expansion, setting a record in Western New York for the largest private contribution to a cultural institution.

With each additional grant, Gundlach adds to that record.

He pledged $10 million more in November 2017, another $10 million in November 2019, and now $2.5 million, assuming the challenge grant is met.

The expanded museum is expected to reopen in fall 2022, nearly three years since the museum closed in November 2019 for the project. When it reopens, the museum will become known as the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, or Buffalo AKG Art Museum for short.

AKG stands for the museum's major contributors: John J. Albright, Seymour H. Knox Jr. and Jeffrey E. Gundlach.

Construction of the new gallery building continues at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

A new three-story semi-transparent building is being erected on the northern end of the campus, along Elmwood Avenue, which will allow the museum to more than double its exhibition space and serve as the new entrance. The new building also calls for an indoor sculpture terrace that will encircle the main galleries and provide a 360-degree wraparound view of the surrounding landscape.

A bridge will connect the new North Building and E.B. Green's historic 1905 building, and improve the museum's ability to handle and transport valuable artwork. The building is undergoing roof, masonry and drainage repairs and re-creation of the grand staircase.

The 1962 Gordon Bunshaft addition will be used for educational purposes and exhibition space, and a 6,000-square-foot community space marked by a "Common Sky" sculptural canopy and of east-west access.

Parking for the new building will be underground, with the former surface parking lot turned into a green plaza for public events.

A rendering shows the new north building of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery as viewed from the covered parking garage.

Jones said the matching grant provides an opportunity for people to participate in the funding of the museum and feel a sense of ownership.

"It really doesn't matter whether a person's contribution is $10 or on the incredible scale of Jeffrey's, It all takes us to the same place," Jones said.

There are potential funders museum officials are in discussions with that they hope will contribute to the expansion.

"Our hope is that by the time these doors are open we will have all of the gifts to the campaign pledged," Jones said.

For more information, go to albrightknox.org/matchingchallenge.

Workers placed the first steel columns for the Gundlach Building at the new Buffalo AKG Art Museum on Friday, May 14, 2021.

A 400-ton crane lifted one of nine custom-made air handlers weighing 30,000 pounds and lowered it into the new sub-basement of the future Buff…

Construction 45 feet below the surface is going full tilt at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery to build a new 3-story, 30,000-square-foot glass building at the northern end of the campus. The pit was formed by excavating 38,000 cubic yards of soil – enough to fill more than 2,700 dump trucks.

An underground parking lot by the southernmost foundation wall is also being built. To date, 2,337 cubic yards of concrete has been poured, reinforced by 209 tons of steel rebar. The final foundation wall is expected to be poured next week. A crane is helping with the process for pouring the foundation walls and concrete slabs.

Next month, enormous air handlers and chillers – too large to fit through a door – will be installed in the basement. The steel frame for the new building is expected to start going up later this spring.

Repairs to the original 1905 building and the renovation of the 1962 addition are also underway.

The $168 million expansion project broke ground on Nov. 22, 2019, and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2022, when the museum will be formally renamed the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. AKG stands for the museum's major donors: John J. Albright, Seymour H. Knox Jr. and Jeffrey E. Gundlach.

"The progress we have made in the past year has been remarkable to witness and be a part of," said Janne Sirén, the museum's director. "In the coming months, the new museum campus will really begin to take shape. All of us are excited to welcome the world to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in 2022."

Workers pour the concrete foundation walls for the new structure at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery which is adding the building through it's AK360 Campus Expansion project, Monday, March 22, 2021. The project is planned to be completed in 2022 and the museum will have more than double the exhibition space when it reopens as the Buffalo AKG Art Gallery.

A look at the progress of construction at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery where the massive AK360 Campus Expansion project is underway to build …

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery's $168 million expansion promised to be challenging even before Covid-19.

Despite the added challenges brought on by the pandemic, museum officials say it has had only a slight effect on the project's timeline.

"We remain on track, on budget and on schedule in the big picture of things," said Janne Siren, the museum's director.

Meanwhile, the museum continues to raise money to finish paying for the project, bringing in $4.2 million since the November 2019 groundbreaking. That leaves about $25 million remaining to be raised.

"Where we are with the fundraising is not a bad place to be when we have two years to finish things up," Siren said.

Construction work on the new three-story glass building on the northern end of the campus came to a halt for two months beginning in late May when Gov. Andrew Cuomo put the brakes on most construction projects due to the novel coronavirus. Since work resumed, the construction work in front of the museum, where the new building and underground parking will go, has continued without delay.

Roof, masonry and drainage repairs to the 1905 building are also moving forward.

Scaffolding surrounds the columns on the south side of the 1905 building at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020.

The changes to the museum are due to be completed in the second half of 2022, when the campus will reopen as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. AKG stands for the museum's major contributors: John J. Albright, Seymour H. Knox Jr. and Jeffrey E. Gundlach.

The changes will include a winding bridge connecting the newest and oldest buildings, an enhanced educational center in the 1962 building and a glass-covered public space in its former outdoor sculpture garden featuring a mirrored, funnel-shaped sculpture. That space, open to all, will open onto Delaware Park, better integrating the museum into the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park where it resides.

While building and paying for the expansion are the main focus, programming decisions are also being made for exhibition space that will double in size when the work finishes.

"In particular, we will celebrate the work of Clyfford Still and Marisol in the installation of our collection upon the reopening of the museum, as well as the work of many other artists in our collection, including Frida Kahlo, Robert Indiana, Mark Bradford and Deborah Roberts," Siren said.

Several major exhibitions are planned a couple of years after the museum reopens, including one on the works of Marisol and the other on Stanley Whitney, both being put together by Chief Curator Cathleen Chaffee. The exhibitions will later travel to other art institutions.

"Laura," the 2012 marble sculpture by artist Jaume Plensa, is wrapped in a blue tarp on the north end of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which is surrounded by scaffolding, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020.

While the campus is closed during construction, Albright-Knox Northland, on the city's East Side, will reopen Saturday with "Swoon: Seven Contemplations." And the museum's public art program continues to sponsor murals, sculptures and other public art projects throughout the city.

Filling the pit

One of the uncertainties with Covid-19, Siren said, concerns building materials.

"The supply chain, for anybody who works with materials, whether it may be mobile telephones or exercise machines or building materials, is a question that everybody is a little bit concerned about," Siren said. "We don't know anything concrete about this at this point."

The Gilbane Building Co. excavated 38,000 cubic yards of soil – enough to fill more than 2,700 dump trucks – from where the parking lot was located to make way for the new building, creating a large pit in front of the museum along Elmwood Avenue. Piles were driven 45 feet into the ground to stabilize the walls for the building's foundation and underground parking.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is framed by an opening in a construction barricade surrounding the site, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020.

Plumbing and other preparatory work is expected to begin in a couple of weeks, with the pouring of the concrete foundation expected to begin in early fall and the erecting of structural steel this winter.

The new building's glass facade will be enclosed in 2021, with interior finishes, mechanical systems and outdoor landscaping to follow.

The exterior repairs at the 1905 building include asbestos removal in preparation for work on the mechanical systems. Reconstruction of the grand stairs removed nearly 60 years ago, when the 1962 building was constructed, will occur in 2021.

The stairs will be located where the entrance had been to the museum's education wing, which is moving to the 1962 building. Preparatory work has begun for interior changes in that building, too, but the bulk of the work is slated for later in the process.

At Clifton Hall, on the museum's southern end of the campus, interior renovations have been completed, allowing all of the staff offices to be in the same building.

$25 million to go

Fundraising has brought in $142.7 million of the $168 million needed for construction.

That includes $62.5 million from Gundlach, a Snyder native and billionaire Los Angeles investor, and $21.6 million from New York State.

Of the remaining $25.3 million still to be raised, roughly half – $12.7 million – are in "the pipeline," Siren said.

"I would say that of what's in the pipeline there are some that are high likelihood and some that are medium likelihood," Siren said. "If I were to put my best estimation on the table, I would say that we have a greater likelihood of obtaining those funds than not."

An updated rendering of the new building at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

That would leave $12.6 million to be obtained.

An additional $17.8 million has been raised for the museum's operating endowment, Siren said.

Some of the money raised is coming from relationships forged in Europe.

Siren said the board of directors of the Fine Arts Academy, the museum's governing body, set an objective when he began in 2013 to expand global awareness and support for the Albright-Knox, given its internationally renowned art collection and celebrated exhibitions.

The #BNdrone takes you on a tour over the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where construction is underway on a massive new campus expansion that will double the amount of the gallery's world-renowned collection that can be on display. The gallery will reopen in 2022 as the Buffalo AKG Art Gallery.

Siren also stressed the importance of art to society after raising the issue of how some might question raising funds for the expansion while a pandemic is causing widespread unemployment and other hardships.

"I think of art and culture as the glue that keeps humanity together," Siren said. "For me, this is an investment not in art objects per se but in our common humanity, and in a space that can bring people together, enhance our mutual understanding and be a beacon of excellence for Buffalo and Western New York for future generations.

"The circumstances are what they are, but for me the objective is clear," Siren said. "We are building Buffalo's and Western New York's future and there is no hesitation in my efforts in this regard."

It will be a busy two years or so as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery embarks on its first expansion since 1962.

The construction schedule from Gilbane Building Co., the construction manager, indicates that construction of the $165 million expansion could be completed in 2022.

The biggest part of the expansion – a new three-story glass building on the northern end of the campus – will allow twice as much artwork to be on display.

Here's what to expect in the coming years, according to John Cleary, Gilbane's senior project executive, and Ryan Disch, the company's senior project manager for the expansion.

Now: Temporary fence barricades and heavy construction equipment are signs of the work underway since the Nov. 22 groundbreaking. The buildings have been secured. Gas, electric, sewer and water remain fully functional so crews can do work inside the buildings during the construction period.

Beginning in February: Workers with excavation equipment will clear the site, which is expected to last a few months. The parking lot will be removed, along with curbs and some trees. A field office will also be set up.

Starting in late summer: Foundation work for the new building will begin. That will be followed by the construction of foundation walls and preparing for steel that will be erected later in the year. Upgrades will be made to the mechanical systems in the 1905 building, and interior renovations will be made to the 1962 building. Part of the space will become the museum's educational wing with classrooms, while another part will become a covered courtyard featuring a mirrored, funnel-shaped glass canopy.

First half of 2021: The new building's glass façade, supported by the structural steel, will be enclosed. Interior finishes will follow, along with mechanical work and outdoor landscaping. A bridge between the new building and the 1905 building will be erected, and the 1905 building's stairs will be reconstructed.

Timeline for completion: "Right now, we're following the museum's lead that the project will be completed in 2022," Cleary said.

He said the completion date will depend on a number of variables, including weather.

"Mid-2022 is our best guess right now," he said.

Gilbane is proud to work on a project of this magnitude, Cleary said.

"The Albright-Knox does a building every 60 years," he said. "If you look at the significance of this project, it is going to be standing well over 100 years, and it's part of Buffalo's renaissance."

For Disch, the Albright-Knox becomes the third museum expansion for which he has worked as project manager. He recently worked on the renovation of the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., completed in February 2019.

He also worked on the 100,000-square-foot expansion of the Corning Museum of Glass, which was finished in 2015.

"It was a big glass box that is a similar design to what we're trying to accomplish here in Buffalo," Disch said.

Cleary said the company is up for anything, including Buffalo's weather.

"It wouldn't be a world-class museum expansion renovation project without challenges," Cleary said. "There are lots of challenges, but we're up to it."

The number of artworks displayed to the public will more than double when the expanded and renamed Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, or Buffalo AKG Art Museum, reopens in 2022.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has a collection of nearly 8,000 modern and contemporary artworks but could display only 2% due to lack of space.

But the day more can be shown drew closer Friday as the museum broke ground on a projected $165 million expansion.

"We are taking this all the way home, baby, all the way home," said Jeffrey Gundlach, the Snyder native and billionaire investor in Los Angeles who's covering $62.5 million of the project. "Let's go Buffalo! Bring on the construction team."

At the groundbreaking, Gundlach announced he was giving an additional $10 million on top of the $52.5 million he previously gave. That brings the project's overall total raised to $138.5 million, $26.5 million shy of the AK360 capital campaign's goal.

Gundlach said his contribution also honors John J. Albright, an industrialist and philanthropist whose financial contribution helped build the museum. He said a bridge that will be built on the campus will be named for Albright.

Three buildings will also be named to honor significant Albright-Knox contributors, said Alice Jacobs, the museum's board president.

"It's a very historic day for the gallery," said Seymour H. Knox IV, a board member. "We have seen a lot of reiterations with various directors over an extended time frame, and it's great to see it finally coming to fruition."

Inside Albright-Knox's auditorium, museum officials, supporters and elected officials thanked Gundlach for his philanthropy and expressed excitement for what the museum's expansion will mean for the city.

Gundlach also praised Knox Jr., joking that his mighty acquisitions made the expansion necessary.

He spoke of the challenges in raising money for the project.

"There were times during the process of coming to this moment when confidence wavered, even recently," Gundlach confided. "There were fears that this groundbreaking might be premature given the level of fundraising relative to the ambitions of the project."

It was why, Gundlach said after the program was over, that he stepped in with his latest eight-figure donation.

The new building, the museum's first expansion in 60 years, will serve as the main entrance, add 30,000 square feet to the campus' footprint and include a wraparound promenade.

The building was designed by Shohei Shigematsu, a partner at OMA who's based in New York City.

The new building will be located on what is now a parking lot, and the rest of the lot will be converted into a green plaza, with parking moved underground.

A curvy bridge will connect the new north building with the 1905 building and also be used to transport artwork. The front steps of the original building will be restored decades after their removal.

A covered courtyard will offer passage on the east facade of the Bunshaft building to Delaware Park, Hoyt Lake and Lincoln Parkway under a mirrored, funnel-shaped glass canopy.

The 1962 building, with its glass-walled auditorium, will become home to a new education center.

"When people talk about the great art museums of the world, they will not only talk about the collection of the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum," said County Executive Mark Poloncarz. "They will now talk about the facility as being one of the greatest in the world, and we should be proud of that."

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown praised the museum for creating a presence on the East Side in January 2020 with the opening of Albright-Knox Northland at 612 Northland Ave. The site will be used for exhibitions and events while the main campus is closed.

There will also be mobile art truck and a continuation of the museum's support of murals and other public art initiatives.

Patrick Kaler, president of Visit Buffalo Niagara, said the tourism bureau can't wait to talk up the coming Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

"We've known that the Albright-Knox is one of the top contemporary art museums in the world," Kaler said. "But we haven't been able to really showcase more of the collection, so I think this gives a truly wonderful opportunity to bring more of it out for the entire world."

Gundlach said the changes "will elevate this jewel of Buffalo's cultural institutions to the global destination status it deserves."

"I suspect that we will go back to the type of visitation levels that the Albright-Knox Art Gallery saw at its opening in 1962, which is about five to six times what we see today," Gundlach said. "So, I think the architecture, the beauty, the interaction with Delaware Park and, of course, the 500-plus undisputed masterpieces will give a further boost in the arm to the Buffalo renaissance."

Gundlach said his regular trips to the Albright-Knox with his mother, Carol Gundlach, fostered his love for art at an early age. Her influence, he said, extended to his involvement with the expansion project.

"She's kind of one of the reasons why this happened," Gundlach said. "When the AK360 project was being kicked around, there was a lot of trepidation, understandably, that it was going to be a failed effort. My mother started sending me articles from The Buffalo News talking about the project, so she was probably hoping maybe I'd be a part of it."

Although it's been a long time since Gundlach made Buffalo his primary home, he said he returns each year for Thanksgiving. He also recently bought a house near the museum.

"I like the Buffalo of today. I didn't much like the Buffalo of 1990, where there was a lot of fear and loathing, a lot of negative sentiment," Gundlach said. "That has largely dissipated, and I think this project is just another chapter in that long wonderful volume being written about Buffalo in the 21st century."

• • •

Here are five features coming to the museum when it reopens in 2022.

1. A glass entrance. A semi-transparent, three-story building on the northeast end of the campus will double exhibition space and serve as the main entrance.

• • •

2. Parking goes green. A green plaza will replace the surface parking lot, with parking moved underground.

• • •

3. Historic feature restored. The 1905 building's front steps that were removed decades ago will be restored.

• • •

4. Connecting to Delaware Park. A covered courtyard will provide passage to and from Delaware Park under a mirrored, funnel-shaped glass canopy.

A rendering of the "Common Sky" canopy for a new civic space coming to the Seymour H. Knox Building. Construction is expected to start this week and last three months.

• • •

5. Bridging the new with the old. A curvy, scenic bridge will connect the new north building with the 1905 building and help with the transport of artwork.

Shonnie Finnegan has been coming to the Albright-Knox regularly since 1964, almost the entire time as a member.

So it wasn't surprising that the Williamsville resident was at the museum Sunday, hours before it was to close its doors for a $160 million expansion that's expected to take around two years.

"We wanted to say goodbye to old favorites for several years," she said.

At the same time, Finnegan said she is excited about the museum's future plans for a four-story building that will serve as a new entrance and more than double the museum's exhibition space. The new building also calls for an indoor sculpture terrace that will encircle the main galleries and provide a 360-degree wraparound view of the surrounding landscape.

Finnegan also cited plans for a scenic bridge that will connect the new North Building and E.B. Green's historic 1905 building, as well as improve the museum's ability to handle and transport valuable artwork.

Plans also call for the 1962 Gordon Bunshaft addition to be used for educational purposes, with six classrooms, exhibition space and a 6,000-square-foot community space marked by a "Common Sky" sculptural canopy and restoration of east-west access. The 1905 building's staircase, lost decades ago to the automobile, will be recreated.

Parking for the new building will be underground, with the current parking lot turned into a green plaza that will be used for public events such as concerts.

Finnegan was one of hundreds of people in attendance Sunday, all of them among the 5,000 people projected to visit the Albright-Knox during its closing weekend, according to Maria Morreale, the museum's director of communications.

"There is a lot of love in this community for this museum and it's wonderful to see it," Morreale said. "This has been a long time coming. We have been working on this for many years, and we're on the brink of it happening, and that's a great moment."

"It's going to be bigger and better than ever," Morreale said.

Many people shared that view after examining a large 3-D model of the planned expansion.

"I think it's spectacular," said Lauren Molenda, who was at the museum with her husband, Steven, and Millie, the couple's 4-year-old daughter.

"Two years is a long time, but I can understand," Molenda said. "By then my daughter will be able to be at a good age to take art classes and things like that. We thought we'd bring her out on the last day to have a memory before then."

Jasoda Silva said she was unsure about the new building as she studied the model but that she was looking forward to seeing how it looked when completed.

"I love the way it will open as far as the surroundings, and the way it's connected to the old building as well, but I'm not sure of the scale," Silva said. "I think it looks bigger than needed, but I don't know what the program is going to be."

The model impressed Rusty Buehler, who said he comes to the Albright-Knox regularly for new exhibits.

"The new structure looks very cool," he said, singling out the curvy bridge.

Asked how he planned to bide his time in the interim, Buehler's mother quickly volunteered, "We're hoping children."

Buehler preferred to bring up AK Northland, expected to open Jan. 17 about 3 miles away at 612 Northland Ave., off Fillmore Avenue, with 8,000 square feet of exhibition space along with special programs and events. The museum's permanent collection won't be on display, due to a lack of necessary temperature control.

Buehler expressed skepticism that the renovation will be completed in the announced time frame.

"I think it's going to take longer than two years," Buehler said.

He wasn't alone in sharing that view, but Morreale said every effort will be made to expedite and complete the renovation as quickly as possible.

"We're really focused on trying to deliver within two years," she said. "We can only anticipate at this point, but we would like to be done in two years."

When the venerable cultural institution reopens, it will be renamed the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, AKG for short.

On Sunday, a section of the museum's first floor was closed, the artwork having already been removed and put into storage. The gift shop, with prices marked 50 percent off, was also mostly cleared out by noon.

Some of the gallery's 7,500 members on hand moved through blackened rooms upstairs and stepped into cones of projected light as they viewed Anthony McCall's "Dark Rooms, Solid Light," which was also closing.

Chicago resident Tina Weil, who had longed wanted to see the Albright-Knox, was disappointed that a Willem de Kooning painting was nowhere to be found. But she was overjoyed to see Giacomo Balla's "Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash."

"That stole my heart, completely," Weil said. "You have a beautiful collection. Each piece is really special."

Ciara Nachreiner, of Colden, was prompted by the museum's closing to visit for the first time. It was husband David's first time back in more than 20 years.

"I've lived in Buffalo 15 years and I've never been here," Ciara Nachreiner said. "So I saw in the news that it was closing and I wanted to come."

That was the opposite for Elizabeth Finnegan, Shonnie Finnegan's daughter. Like her mother, she said she felt a need to come on the last day.

"I grew up coming to this museum. I've been coming here since early childhood, so this is my first idea of what art was," Finnegan said.

She said she is excited about the museum's future.

"It will be very interesting to see how they will handle new exhibitions using the new space, because there are so many possibilities," Finnegan said.

The gallery has raised $137.3 million, leaving $22.7 million to go.

While the campus is closed, Janne Siren, the gallery's director, told members at the annual meeting held on Oct. 2 that he is continuing fundraising efforts, with much of his time looking for donors outside of Buffalo, including internationally.

By the time the Albright-Knox Art Gallery closes its doors on Nov. 4 for its two-year expansion and renovation project, it will have raised more than $153 million.

But to reach its goal of $180 million – $160 million for construction costs and another $20 million for an operating endowment – it still has about $27 million to go. And with local pocketbooks mostly tapped out, gallery director Janne Sirén is taking his fundraising drive on the road. Or, more accurately, across the Atlantic Ocean.

"I have recently advanced our fundraising efforts to Europe, and we have several million in already from donors beyond the borders of the United States," Sirén said during Monday's meeting of the Buffalo Planning Board. "I think that says something about this project, especially since those are individuals who get no tax credits or any other benefits other than the joy in participating in this Buffalo project."

Albright-Knox Communications Director Maria Morreale confirmed that the museum is working on "a number of fundraising projects in Europe," but declined to give further details, citing ongoing negotiations. She added that more information about potential European funders will be available in the spring.

"It's a very exciting advance that we are making," Sirén said on Monday. "There are not very many American institutions that fundraise this actively outside the United States."

After the museum breaks ground on its long-planned project, which will include a new, 30,000-square-foot building and an underground parking garage, it will host events and exhibitions in a renovated space at 612 Northland Ave. Construction is expected to take about two years.

News Staff Reporter Jonathan Epstein contributed to this report.

Albright-Knox unveils expansion plans, set to close for 2 years

In 2017, after critics came out in force against the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's plan to create a grand plaza out of its low-key courtyard, gallery leaders and architects retreated to the drawing board.

Together with the consulting firms Preservation Studios and PBMW, the New York State Office of Historic Preservation and a subcommittee of the Buffalo Preservation Board, the gallery's architecture firm OMA hashed out a new plan that sought to address preservationists' concerns.

The result, a radically different scheme featuring a new building on the north side of the campus and a swooping ceiling of mirrored glass enclosing the gallery's existing courtyard, is on the verge of approval from state and local preservation authorities.

The Buffalo Preservation Board on Thursday heard a 45-minute presentation from Albright-Knox Director Janne Sirén and architects from OMA and the structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti about the project. The board approved all aspects of the project aside from the new north building, which will come up for a final vote at the next meeting of the board on May 2.

Barring last-minute objections, it is expected to pass. The State Historic Preservation Office is also expected to issue a letter of support for the project.

"We have extended the process and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to make this just so, just so that it meets the secretary's standards," Sirén said Thursday, referring to the Secretary of the Interior's standards for historic preservation that the gallery is required to follow. "That has been our objective, and that is why we have spent a year and a half longer than we anticipated on this process."

Sirén noted during the meeting that "from no bedroom do you get a clear shot at this new building," adding that it preserves sightlines toward the gallery's existing buildings and is well-camouflaged by tree cover in the neighborhood. Renderings from the gallery's submission to the board, meant to emphasize the building's low profile, show nearly imperceptible slivers of the new structure peeking through leaves and emerging from behind other structures from various angles.

While Olafur Eliasson's proposed glass covering for Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 courtyard has elicited some negative reactions from local and national preservationists and writers, they do not seem likely to affect its chances for implementation at the state or local level.

Gregory Delaney, a clinical assistant professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo who specializes in architectural history, said he has concerns about the way the Eliasson's glass sculpture blocks the view from the courtyard of Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 building and E.B. Green's original 1905 building.

"I think it fundamentally still destroys the essence of what's so strong about that space," he said. "I would say that I am very skeptical that they can pull it off in a way that it won't just basically look awful in a matter of a few years."

"Because what every Gordon Bunshaft masterpiece needs is a disco ceiling," architecture critic Alexandra Lange wrote on Twitter after the new renderings of Eliasson's "Common Sky" were released. "I might have to lie down."

Shasti O'Leary Soudant, an artist who has worked with the gallery's public art program in the past, praised the piece for its dual potential to satisfy self-seekers and create a genuine sense of wonder among visitors.

"It's pretty grand, and I’m going to be interested to see how it works," said Soudant, who considers Eliasson an inspiration for her own work. "We need those things that make us smile and make us feel childlike, and he's very good at that."

News Staff Reporter Barbara O'Brien contributed to this report.

When an expanded Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Museum opens in 2021, visitors will see their own reflections in a kaleidoscopic network of mirrored glass suspended over the center of the campus.

But before experiencing "Common Sky," a monumental sculpture by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson that will enclose a new public gathering space, art fans will suffer a period of withdrawal from the Clyfford Stills and Picassos they know and love.

The gallery's buildings will close for at least two years when the museum breaks ground on its long-planned expansion and renovation project at the end of the year.

The museum announced the extended closure on Thursday, along with news that it will host off-site programming in a 15,000-square-foot space on Northland Avenue beginning early next year.

"We have conducted extensive research on the costs and benefits of keeping portions of the museum campus open during construction," Albright-Knox Director Janne Sirén said during Thursday's announcement in the Albright-Knox auditorium. "Given that the museum will be an active construction site, operations here at the Elmwood Avenue campus will begin to wind down as we approach groundbreaking toward the end of this year."

Construction is expected to begin in November, according to Albright-Knox Communications Director Maria Morreale. While much of the gallery's staff will continue to produce exhibitions and events in the community and plan for the museum's reopening, Morreale said about 10 full-time staff positions and several part-time positions would be affected by the construction period.

The new space on the East Side, while not appropriate for housing the gallery's famous paintings and sculptures, will serve as a project space for installations and exhibitions that are not dependent on museum-level climate control.

"We're really excited to be a part of this neighborhood," said Albright-Knox board president Alice Jacobs. "It's a critical effort in the economic renaissance of Buffalo, the development of this Northland corridor, and it really speaks to our strategic plan of wanting to engage other areas of the community."

There are no current plans to tour the masterworks from the gallery's collection as it did in 2014, curator Cathleen Chaffee said. Instead, museum staff will use the construction period to perform conservation, framing and photography of those pieces so they're ready for their reintroduction in 2021.

The gallery's partnership with the City of Buffalo and Erie County on public art, Jacobs said, will expand during the construction process, with specifics to be announced later this spring. The gallery is also launching an art truck in spring 2020, which, according to a release from the gallery, will "drive creativity throughout Western New York" with an array of activities, classes and projects.

The monumental new artwork that will bubble up from Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 addition, called "Common Sky," features a geometric network of clear and mirrored glass that descends into a funnel connected to the ground. In that way, the sculpture will allow snow and sky to penetrate the space — at least visually — giving visitors a sense of connection to the outside environment while being insulated from its chill.

The shape of the piece was inspired, Eliasson said, by the way snow piles up into drifts on a windy day.

"I really wanted to give the quality of light in the room a kind of spectacular quality," Eliasson said, prompting a round of applause from the crowd as he displayed a detailed rendering of the planned space. "As you walk through the space, you will see yourself in a small reflection in the sky. Seeing yourself in the context of the sky suggests that there are no limits to where we should be imagining ourselves."

The gallery's expansion plans have been germinating for more than a decade, taking various forms as gallery leaders and architects contended with fundraising, preservation and practical challenges. Opposition to the gallery's initial expansion plan, which called for radically altering architect Gordon Bunshaft's sleek 1962 building into a sprawling public indoor space, pushed the gallery toward the current plan.

That plan calls for a new, semi-transparent building on the northeast end of the museum's campus with about 30,000 square feet of new gallery space. The building will connect to the gallery's original 1905 building via a winding "scenic bridge." And the current parking lot along Elmwood Avenue will be buried and replaced with an open lawn, restoring an important part of Frederick Law Olmsted's Delaware Park. The project also will restore a reimagined version of the west stairs that existed when the original building opened in 1905.

Shohei Shigematsu, the lead architect for the expansion project, unveiled several new renderings of the planned building and scenic bridge. The new building on the campus' north side will feature a double-height gallery at the entrance and a cross-shaped core of gallery spaces surrounded by transparent public spaces, offices and other functions along the transparent outside corridors. New, underground parking will connect visitors directly to gallery entrances in the new building and the current 1962 building.

"It really represents the rich history of architectural ambition of Buffalo, and I’m of course very honored to be part of it," Shigematsu said. "I also wanted to point out the resonance or similarity in terms of the architectural gesture between the north building and Olafur's roof, which both have a great ambition to actually welcome people and have space for people to produce and invent and interact."

Eliasson and architect Sebastian Behmann's newly commissioned covering for the gallery's courtyard, currently empty of art and visitors, will enclose an indoor plaza that will function as a free community gathering and event space. Visitors will be able to enter from the east and west sides of the campus, creating a pass-through for park visitors and a funnel into the broader museum.

Sculpture anchoring Albright-Knox expansion to bring Buffalo weather inside

"We envision this new space as a global destination and as an epicenter of cultural and social activity in Western New York," Janne Sirén, director of Albright-Knox, said on Thursday.

Funding for the project, now projected to cost $160 million, with $131 million already in hand, has been driven largely by the Amherst-born philanthropist Jeffrey Gundlach, a billionaire bond trader who has committed $52.5 million of his own fortune to the expansion. Upon its completion in 2021, the gallery will be renamed the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, or Buffalo AKG for short.

Gundlach has given Western New York "the courage and the jet fuel" to accomplish the project, Sirén said.

The plan drew rave reviews from observers in the crowd and public officials including Mayor Byron W. Brown and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, who praised the inspiring words of a young art fan named Isaac, the star of a new promotional video the gallery screened on Thursday.

"When I heard the words from Isaac, it just reminded me why we do these types of projects," Poloncarz said. "We do them not only for our own enjoyment, but we do them so when people walk in here in the future, they realize that this is a community that cares about the rest of the community, and this is a community that says to the rest of the world, not only do we matter in the art world, we matter for everyone."

Little about the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's outdoor courtyard, a desolate and often snowswept plaza at the center of a bustling museum, seems suitable for a community meeting space.

With understated entrances, a few austere pieces of sculpture and one lonely tree, the courtyard's architectural message seems to say "look, don't touch" — not "come in and hang out."

But that is likely to change as the gallery takes steps to convert its cold shoulder of a courtyard into a covered indoor town square, as part of its $155 million expansion and renovation project.

The gallery held a public meeting Tuesday in McKinley High School to gather community feedback about the proposed space, a key part of its attempt to put a public face on a private structure.

"The transformation of an area of the museum originally conceived of in 1960 as a private space for members into one which the entire community is invited to enter for free," said Albright-Knox board chair Alice Jacobs, "is in many ways symbolic of the entire transformation of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery into the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum."

In an effort to cast a wider net than some of its past public meetings, the gallery enlisted a task force of about 25 people representing diverse communities from across the city.

Prior to Tuesday's meeting, the group met and brainstormed ideas for how to program and configure the new space. The gallery sent out a separate survey about the space for those who couldn't make the meeting, which asks participants about their favorite public spaces in Buffalo, activities and programming they'd like to see and how often they attend entertainment events.

The Gordon Bunshaft-designed courtyard, gallery officials have long said, is one of the more challenging spaces in the gallery – both because of its exposure to the elements and the exclusionary message it sends to visitors.

At a time when the museum is repositioning itself as a welcoming space for the entire community, gallery leaders see the courtyard as emblematic of a less inclusive period.

"It's this sacred internal space that is meant to be looked into, but maybe not ventured into," Joe Martin Lin-Hill, the Albright-Knox's deputy director, told The News last year. "This is a lot of space right at the very, very heart of our campus. It needs to read as a space that belongs to the public."

The gallery's original plans for the space were more dramatic. They called for blowing out the entire space into a grand entry hall, above which a new, glass-walled gallery would float.

But those plans were scuttled after an outcry from preservationists and architectural historians, who opposed dismantling what they consider a pristine and important piece of period architecture.

Last year, the architectural firm OMA and lead architect Shohei Shigematsu released new plans calling for the courtyard to be covered in order to accommodate visitors in all seasons. The new structure will have an artist-designed glass ceiling, according to task force member Sam Magavern.

Rita Hubbard-Robinson, who is leading the task force charged with collecting ideas about the new space, said the notion of a community meeting place that functions in all seasons was exciting for Buffalo.

"It's the idea that there's a space that you can go to beside the mall and the library in the winter that is peaceful," she said. "We want this to be a place all people feel welcome."

Those who want to contribute their ideas for the new public space can click here to fill out the survey.

What began as an ambitious goal is becoming reality.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has raised $131 million toward its $155 million goal to pay for its planned expansion project. As fundraising continues, groundbreaking could come late this year or early 2020, with the museum's opening now projected in about three years — either late 2021 or early 2022.

The fundraising took a major step forward Friday, thanks to a $3.3 million grant from the state's Buffalo Billion economic program. That allowed the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the museum's governing body, to reach the $10 million mark necessary to trigger a matching $10 million grant from billionaire investor Jeffrey Gundlach.

The Buffalo-born Gundlach made the matching grant offer in November 2017. It followed his gift of $42.5 million in 2016 — the third-largest single philanthropic gift ever in Western New York — that gave the project an enormous boost out of the starting gate.

Gundlach pledges $10 million more to Albright-Knox expansion

"I am thrilled to be the anchor of this project, and we are going to see it through all the way home," Gundlach said at a news conference inside the museum, with Jackson Pollock's drip painting "Convergence" as a backdrop.

The project will not only advance the gallery but also the community's reputation, Gundlach said.

"It's true that we are underappreciated, but it's also true that we punch way above our weight class," Gundlach said. "So, this is going to be a terrific situation that I think is going to be great for the city. I think the investments from the county, the city, the state, the assembly, so on, will be paid off in spades, not just in economic revenue, but in pride and reputation."

The centerpiece of the expansion calls for erecting a new building at the northwest end of the property to double exhibition space.

The project also calls for improving logistics to move art, creating an educational wing, developing a covered courtyard and walk-through to Delaware Park, restoring 2 acres of green space by burying the parking lot, rehabilitating the front stairs of the 1905 building and adding a scenic bridge between that building and the new north building.

The gallery will be renamed the Buffalo Albright Knox Gundlach Art Museum, or Buffalo AKG Art Museum, after the expansion is complete.

The architect is Shohei Shigematsu of the Dutch firm Office of Metropolitan Architecture.

Donor prospects have been identified for approximately half of the $24 million that still needs to be raised, said Janne Sirén, the museum's director. He added that the museum prefers not to borrow money for the project if at all possible, though no final decision has been made.

There have also been no changes to the plan presented to the public in 2018.

"The basic premise of the design is where it was when we shared it with the public last June," Sirén said.

The project is in the design development phase through early May, during which final cost estimates will be made. Detailed exterior and interior renderings are expected to be shared with the public in June.

The next planning phase will take the project through the end of the year, with site work starting in the fall. Construction is expected to take two years.

Leading such a large and weighty project has challenged Sirén.

"Most museum directors have never had an opportunity to engage a project that's this challenging, large and complicated," Siren said. "It is like getting a new Ph.D. in a new discipline. I have done construction projects before, but never one of this scale and scope, and of this level of historic importance.

"This is really about historic preservation at the same time it is building a new pearl to an already very fine necklace," Sirén said.

Sirén expressed the museum's gratitude to Gundlach, and said he's fascinated by him.

"He is a polymath, in the sense he knows a lot about the Bills, a lot about bonds and he knows a lot about art," he said. "There aren't many people who have his range of knowledge across disciplines.

"He is very, very dedicated to Buffalo," Sirén said.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who announced the Buffalo Billion grant that upped New York State's total contribution to $18.3 million, also praised Gundlach for his generosity.

"I grew up here, and we never had someone like you leave and come back and share the wealth you've accumulated," Hochul said.

Gundlach spoke of his affection for Buffalo, the museum and the positive changes he sees in Buffalo.

He recently purchased a house near the museum, and filled the public rooms on the first floor with contemporary art from Buffalo artists.

Gundlach told a story of buying a sculpture by Anish Kapoor after being outbid for an Andy Warhol self-portrait at a Sotheby's auction a number of years ago. Finding the sculpture too large to display, he put it in storage before offering to loan it to the Albright-Knox.

He showed a picture of the statue to then-Director Louis Grachos, only to learn to his amazement that the very statue was once installed at the Albright-Knox's entrance.

"Literally, that sculpture had been sitting here at the front where that weird banana slope thing is," Gundlach said to scattered laughter. "It was just unbelievable because the probability of that happening is zero.

"Now it's installed in front of my house, and one day that sculpture will be installed at the entrance to the Buffalo AKG."

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has received a $720,000 state grant for the planned expansion of the 1905 campus.

The grant announcement comes at a good time: Billionaire investor Jeffrey Gundlach has offered to match up to $10 million dollar-for-dollar collected in 2018 to help fund the expansion.

The expansion is expected to double the Albright-Knox's exhibition space, make it easier to move art in and out of the museum, create a walk-through to Delaware Park and expand educational programming.

The funds came from the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council.

Plans to expand the Albright-Knox Art Gallery received a $2.5 million boost Monday from the City of Buffalo.

Mayor Byron W. Brown announced the city contribution as the deadline approaches to secure up to $10 million in matching funds from Buffalo-born billionaire investor Jeffrey Gundlach.

Gundlach in November 2017 pledged an additional $10 million on top of his historic gift of $42.5 million toward the gallery's expansion. Gundlach structured his follow-up donation so that he will match all the money raised by the gallery in 2018, up to $10 million. Like Gundlach's original gift, the pledge is designed to motivate others to support the gallery's expansion project.

Janne Siren, the museum's director, declined to say how much money has been raised by the AK360 fundraising campaign this year. But Siren said he was optimistic more money will come in before the new year in an attempt to take full advantage of Gundlach's offer.

"With the help of Mayor Brown, his administration and his team and the city of Buffalo Common Council, the Albright-Knox will be able to create a community gathering place brimming with opportunities for inspiration for all citizens of Buffalo, and the many visitors to our region," Siren said in introducing the mayor for the announcement.

Some of the city funds are expected to be used toward infrastructure improvements that support the museum's expansion.

The city has teamed with the art museum on a number of art initiatives, and it sets aside annual funds to help pay for a curator position for public art.

The expansion plans from Shohei Shigematsu, of the Dutch firm Office of Metropolitan Architecture, has a lot of parts to it.

The design calls for doubling the amount of prime viewing space and improving logistics for moving art, creating an educational wing with classrooms and work spaces and restoring two acres of green space by burying the parking lot.

The sculpture garden in the 1962 Gordon Bunshaft building would be converted to a gathering spot and pass-through to Delaware Park, while and the 1905 E.B. Green building's long-ago demolished west staircase would be re-established.

The gallery is expected to be renamed the Buffalo Albright-Knox Gundlach Art Museum, or Buffalo AKG Art Museum, in 2021 after the projected completion of the $155 million project.

Gundlach, in an email to The Buffalo News in 2017, said the additional $10 million pledge was designed to "help realize the courageous expansion of the project's vision."

"The Buffalo of today is not the Buffalo of recent decades past," he said in the email. "The Buffalo of today has pride and economic momentum. The Buffalo of today can and should stand on its own two feet, even if it needs a little assistance getting there from time-to-time."

A year after the Albright-Knox unveiled its original, controversial expansion plans to change Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 expansion, the gallery this week unveiled a new design that would preserve the Bunshaft building.

Shohei Shigematsu's new design was approved by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, which oversees the gallery. It will feature a new glass building and bridge that will connect to E.B. Green's 1905 building.

The estimated $155 million expansion will increase exhibition space to 48,000 square feet.

Reporter Mark Sommer answers reader questions about the new design:

From John Gnann: This looks great. Now does it comply with the Green Code? Who else has to approve the design?

Sommer: I spoke with Maria Scully-Morreale, Albright-Knox's communications director, to get the gallery's viewpoint. The new design appears to be in compliance with the Green Code. The plan will need to go at least before the Buffalo Preservation Board and the Buffalo Planning Board.

From John Michalski: I recall after visiting art museums in various cities in the U.S., Europe and Asia, hearing that certain masterpieces are damaged by sunlight and certain types of artificial light, dependent upon the type of materials used in the art work. Would this addition be for certain sculptures? A building in which you can see into also means light goes in as well. From the sketch provided the new addition obscures the view of the original building from Elmwood. Why can't the new addition be moved back so as to be "in line" with the original building and the Bunshaft building?

Sommer: While the translucent surface has not been decided on yet, curators are keenly aware of this issue and would never display artwork if sunlight posed a threat. You should know there is art that sun poses no problem for or is even intended to be seen with sunlight.

To your second question, the new building won't obscure the west façade of the 1905 building or the sightlines to and from Elmwood.

For your third question, it was felt there was not enough space on the north side for a new structure.

From Lawrence River: How easy is a glass building going to be to heat in the winter and cool in the summer? Lot of energy and money.

Sommer: The new building will have more efficient mechanical systems and vapor barriers than the current building does.

From Lisa Feldman: I'm not a fan of the site location. Wouldn't the other side of the gallery, behind the auditorium, be more suitable? Its view of the lake and park, rather than Elmwood and the Scajaquada, would be more pleasant.

Sommer: The Albright-Knox didn't want to take away more parkland behind the auditorium, something the public indicated in the past it didn't want to see. Locating the new building on top of what is now a surface parking was seen as mitigating the impact on both green space and the Olmsted park.

Cautious optimism greets Albright-Knox's latest plan for expansion

The design unveiled last year for Albright-Knox Art Gallery's expansion called for building on top of Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 addition.

But altering Bunshaft's black box opened a Pandora's box.

Preservationists accused the plan of denigrating the Buffalo-born Bunshaft's work and robbing the 1962 addition of its architectural integrity. Monday's announcement of a new design was intended to remedy that by leaving the Bunshaft building largely intact.

But the new design by Shohei Shigematsu, of the international firm OMA, had a number of other things to accomplish:

• First and foremost was dramatically expanding exhibition space through the addition of one or more buildings, and improving the logistics for moving priceless art in and out of the 113-year-old space, which often requires use of a crane.

• Restoring 2 acres of green space and burying the parking lot was a priority. So, too, was creating a sense of transparency across the campus and transforming the Bunshaft sculpture garden into an airy, communal expanse as a gathering spot and walk-through to Olmsted's Delaware Park.

• Another part of the plan for the nation's sixth oldest art museum: Reestablishing the 1905 E.B. Green building's long-ago-demolished west staircase.

• Finally, it all had to be done in an artistically and aesthetically pleasing way, as subjective as that can be.

"My overall feeling is that this is a much better direction," said Michael Tunkey, an architect and principal of the Grand Island-based firm Cannon Design.

"I think the No. 1 thing it does is it resolves the site very well by creating more of a quad or campus, as opposed to the previous scheme that was really about a building on top of a building," Tunkey said. "From an art perspective and community perspective, I also think it works very well because it allows the three major buildings on the site to have separate functions that work together as a whole, the way you would expect a great campus to work."

One disadvantage: The former design would have created a more dense campus that simplified circulation and required less walking to see the great works of art, Tunkey said. But doing so would have come at "a huge expense," he said, that canceled out its benefits.

Art collector and educator Gerald Mead also thinks the new design is right on the mark.

"I was there at the presentation, and the continual thought that came to my head was, that they got it right," Mead said.

"I think what was needed was a third standalone building," he said. "I was particularly impressed by the way they likened the complex of all three buildings to an academic campus. The third building creates a signature 21st century architectural work."

Mead said he's glad the courtyard space, as in the earlier plan, will continue to be a public space and conduit between the Olmsted park and Elmwood Avenue. He's also relieved that the height and location of the new building won't affect the classic view from Hoyt Lake toward the Albright-Knox.

The plan calls for a translucent building on the northwest side of the museum grounds, with a wraparound promenade on the second level and three floors for viewing. The 6,000-square-foot open-air sculpture garden in the 1962 building would be covered and opened to the public to serve as an "indoor public square," with an entrance added on the east side of the building.

A curvy transparent bridge would connect the new north building to the neoclassical 1905 building. The west staircase would also be recreated at that building.

Altogether, there will be 48,000 square feet of state-of-the-art exhibition space in the new building and through renovating existing buildings – which will double the amount of prime viewing space.

An education wing with classrooms and work spaces is planned in the Bunshaft building.

Details to be determined over the next seven months, during the next design phase, will be critical, Director Janne Sirén said.

"With each phase the design becomes more articulated and the changes more nuanced," he said.

Buffalo preservation architect Barbara Campagna sees benefits in the new design, but she prefers to reserve judgment until the plan is further along.

"It appears to be much better than what they started out with," said Campagna, who opposed the earlier design for its impact on the Bunshaft building.

Campagna likes the location of the new building and the creation of a campus that looks toward Elmwood Avenue. But she thinks more work needs to be done to address the relationship between the 1905 and 1962 buildings.

Campagna is also not keen on the renderings she's seen for the proposed north building.

"The design of the new building is so cartoonish it's hard to even comment on it," Campagna said. "I just hope it winds up being the right design."

Her biggest complaint? A lack of transparency by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, noting there wasn't a single public meeting to discuss the current design before the board unanimously approved it Monday.

"They just presented this as a fait accompli," Campagna said.

Art consultant Joanna Gillespie liked the first design, but she likes this one, too. She was particularly struck by the museum's accessibility.

"It seems to convey an openness and a kind of access that's encouraging, especially for an institution that is often criticized for exclusivity or loftiness," Gillespie said. "The scenic bridge seems a little corny, but I appreciate what the architect is trying to do and am willing to trust his vision on that because I think he's pretty brilliant."

Gillespie is glad to see the courtyard would still be used as a public space and is intrigued by the new building.

"I think having this giant ziggurat on the north end of the campus is a much more bold statement," Gillespie said. "That makes the project more exciting."

Gwen Howard, chairwoman of the Buffalo Preservation Board, and Stephanie Crockatt, executive director of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, both expressed support for the new plan.

The expansion – which the gallery refers to as "AK360" – is consistent with the Albright-Knox's 10-year strategic plan, "Connecting Art, Ideas and People," which came out two years ago. AK360 refers to the goals of integrating the campus with the Olmsted park and creating "a more inclusive museum that's physically and philosophically accessible to all members of our community."

Board President Alice Jacobs said it was vital for the expansion to be fully aligned with the gallery's strategic plan and its goal of accessibility.

"We want a beautiful building and an architectural icon for Buffalo, and we want to respect the past, but ultimately it's about how we achieve our vision for the future," Jacobs said.

Sirén said the expansion seeks to break down the geographic wall that exists between the museum and the park, and to make the campus more inviting. One-third of the space will be usable without buying an admission ticket, from the courtyard and the green plaza to entrance into the Bunshaft building, he said.

"This kind of gesture is something that evokes a period in our past when that kind of accessibility barrier didn't exist," Sirén said. "We are embracing that part of the legacy in our vision for the future."

This marks the third expansion for the museum, with each having occurred roughly 60 years apart. After an expansion design was unveiled in June to an enthusiastic reception at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center, criticism over the Bunshaft building led back to the drawing board.

Sirén said the new proposal is better for it.

"What we did was look at those salient key features of the initial proposal and ask the question: How can we achieve those objectives at the same time as we salute the legacy of historic architecture?" Sirén said.

"We have a stronger architectural proposal than we did a year ago. I mean that sincerely," he said. "Architecture is an iterative process. The way you arrive at a good solution is through experimentation. Sometimes that can seem tumultuous, but that brainstorming is a fundamentally important part in an architectural planning process."

Sirén said it was important that the education wing, cross-park access and the public courtyard are preserved.

"My one concern would be that it's more ambitious," Sirén said of the new design. "It has more independent components, and therefore as we work to align the architectural program with the project budget, I'm very curious how that will unfold."

A key feature of the changes to come will be the ability to move art safely in and out of the campus through the north building. The proposed bridge, with industry standard 12-foot-by-12-foot dimensions for transporting art, would connect into the 1905 building.

"We won't have to crane things in anymore," he said.

The other essential change will be the ability to drastically increase the number of artworks on view.

Sirén said there will always be a selection of Albright-Knox's most beloved masterpieces on view, whether they're by Clyfford Still, Marisol or Jackson Pollock. But the number of works on display in the gallery when there's a major exhibition will now increase from the current 75 to 125 to several hundred.

There will also be more opportunities to do shows on mid-career artists and larger, special exhibitions, Sirén said.

The expansion cost, along with a boost to the gallery's operating endowment, has been pegged at $155 million.

About one-third of the money is projected to come from Jeffrey E. Gundlach, a Western New York native and Los Angeles-based bond trader who has committed $52.5 million, including community matching grants still to be reached.

Gundlach's name will adorn the building when it is scheduled to open in 2021 as the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum.

Gundlach, in a statement, said he "could not be more enthusiastic" about the design. "With sensitivity, beauty and practicality, OMA's design creates a unified campus literally bridging great eras of the City of Buffalo," he said.

As the planning process moves forward, so, too, does fundraising.

Sirén said he hopes more individuals and families beyond the 195 who have given so far will step forward and contribute to the transformation coming to Buffalo's most celebrated cultural institution.

After spending months working with local, state and national preservationists, Albright-Knox Art Gallery officials on Monday announced a new design for its expansion that would spare a beloved 1962 building by Buffalo-born architect Gordon Bunshaft.

A dramatically different new direction for the gallery's long-planned expansion was approved unanimously Monday night by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the board that oversees the gallery.

In stark contrast to a more compact design released last summer, the plan, designed by Shohei Shigematsu of the international architecture firm OMA, features a new building on the northwest side of the Albright-Knox campus along Iroquois Drive.

Sheathed in what Shigematsu called a "translucent skin," the transparent ziggurat of a building will allow pedestrians to see inside of its galleries and flexible event spaces. It also will contain a public atrium and café.

A winding, transparent "scenic bridge" will connect the new north building to E.B. Green's neoclassical 1905 building, as well as serving as a corridor for transporting art between the two spaces.

The newly released plan also calls for the open-air courtyard in the gallery's 1962 building to be covered and to serve as an "indoor town square," with an added entrance on the east side of the building providing access for those who either want to linger or simply pass through.

As in the past plan, the expansion project will include burying the gallery's current parking lot and creating a sprawling lawn on the west side of the E.B. Green building, as well as recreating that building's long-ago demolished west staircase.

Also preserved from that plan is the amount of total exhibition space the gallery will boast when the project is complete: 50,000 square feet, which Albright-Knox Director Janne Sirén said will "triple or quadruple" the number of artworks the gallery can display.

"You see a tip of an iceberg, and there are a lot of complexities and contradictions underneath that tip," Sirén said at Monday's presentation, hinting at the intense, behind-the-scenes process of working with local, state-level and national preservationists to re-engineer the gallery's expansion plans. "But this is one of those special moments for us."

The announcement follows months of silence from gallery officials, during which the Albright-Knox worked with Shigematsu, preservation consultants and others to develop an alternative to the controversial concept it released last summer.

That concept, which proposed radically modifying the entry hall and galleries of Bunshaft's sleek, modernist 1962 building into an airy indoor expanse and burying the gallery's parking lot, was criticized by preservationists and architectural historians concerned about Bunshaft's legacy.

This plan seems to have put those concerns to rest.

"We have the support – support's probably the right word – of preservation, both state and local," said Buffalo developer Michael Joseph, chairman of the AK360 project committee.

Shortly after the gallery released last year's controversial concept, Buffalo preservationists sent a strongly worded letter to gallery officials about the plan's effect on a local architectural landmark. Two months later, the gallery and OMA hired Preservation Studios of Buffalo and the New York City-based firm PBDW to help guide its efforts to design a preservation-friendly concept.

Gallery staff and employees of Preservation Studios declined repeated requests to speak about the process of addressing preservationists' concerns. So did one other local preservation expert, who signed a nondisclosure agreement with the gallery after being interviewed for a consulting job there.

But in November, the gallery announced in a statement that it was exploring an alternative solution – building an expansion on the north and northwest side of the gallery – "to determine whether this could meet the museum's needs, while also minimizing impacts on the Albright-Knox's historic buildings."

That plan, in turn, produced more critics — demonstrating the nearly impossible challenge the Albright-Knox and its architects face: How to produce an expansion that serves both history and the future, and that honors both the accomplishments of a great midcentury architect and the pressing practical needs of a contemporary gallery?

"If the administration and the architects have to take a bow to the preservationists, then they abrogate their responsibility to the institution, to the Albright-Knox, to the City of Buffalo and to the profession," the Buffalo-born architect Richard Gluckman told The News in November.

During Monday's presentation, Sirén said that the gallery has raised $125 million in pledges. Of those, 195 came from private individuals and families, four came from corporations, 15 came from foundations and the rest from public sources.

The gallery's long-planned expansion project, including a boost to its operating endowment, is slated to cost a total of $155 million. A third of that figure comes from the Los Angeles-based philanthropist and bond trader Jeffrey Gundlach, whose name will adorn the building when it opens in 2021 as the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum.

"Who knows, maybe we'll get some money from abroad," said Sirén, possibly hinting at a potential funding source waiting in the wings.

"Of course, buildings are wonderful," Sirén said during his presentation. "But we're not in the business of building buildings just for the purpose of building. We do them because we are an institution that is in and of our community."

In most contemporary museums, taking out the trash is a simple and discreet endeavor.

But at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which is embarking on a $155 million expansion to add gallery space and renovate its aging buildings, it's a bit more complicated. When workers at the gallery's café need to get rid of waste or transport food, they must roll garbage totes through narrow corridors, carefully navigating around priceless pieces of sculpture and some of the most important paintings in the history of art.

When those totes arrive at the cramped loading dock on the west side of the gallery's 1962 building, they share space with piles of linen waiting to be washed, the exposed guts of dated mechanical systems and crated artworks waiting to be installed in the gallery or carried off on trucks.

"Ideally, in a contemporary art museum, trash and visitors don't mix," said Albright-Knox Deputy Director Joe Martin Lin-Hill, venting one of many frustrations gallery leaders have with the limitations of Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 building.

Those challenges, which go far deeper than the co-mingling of art and trash, are at the center of a controversy over a plan the gallery announced last year to convert Bunshaft's galleries and courtyard into a grand entry hall.

As gallery officials, preservationists and others debate the shape and form the expansion will take, a question lingers in the minds of gallery fans:

Aside from the cramped quarters and the obvious need for more space to show the gallery's collection, what's so bad about the Bunshaft?

From a distance, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's campus at the edge of Delaware Park appears to be in perfect balance.

E.B. Green's 1905 building, a neoclassical marvel hailed for its airy galleries and exquisite symmetry, dissolves into the simple grace of Gordon Bunshaft's low-slung, modernist jewel-box to the south. The dark glass wall of Bunshaft's auditorium reflects the marble colonnade on the south side of Green's building, each architect addressing the other in the language of their time.

But look a little closer – into the cramped loading dock of the 1962 building, into its narrow corridors, walled-off courtyard and the artless walls of its bottlenecked entrance – and this image of visual perfection gives way to practical problems.

This contrast – between a desire to preserve the visual beauty of the gallery's campus and the need to add exhibition space and correct the shortcomings of its existing buildings – is at the heart of the debate over the expansion.

Last year, the architectural firm OMA released a concept that would have converted the building's cramped galleries into a grand entry hall and placed a large new exhibition space between Green's building and Bunshaft's auditorium. But many preservationists and architectural historians decried the approach as an insult to Bunshaft's building and his legacy.

After the controversy, the gallery hired two preservation firms to guide them through a possible alternative solution. That process is ongoing. Though the gallery announced in September it was exploring an alternative expansion on the north side of the campus, neither the gallery nor the firms would offer any comment on where the design is heading or when a revised concept would be released.

Will preservationists again change the course of Albright-Knox expansion?

On a recent afternoon, the Albright-Knox's Lin-Hill talked about the challenges of the building in the gallery's café as snow fell into the deserted courtyard outside the café's windows.

The Bunshaft building, Lin-Hill admitted, is an "exquisite sculpture" and a "beautiful, minimalist gesture."

But, he said, "architecture as form is different from architecture as function."

While the beauty of Bunshaft's form is uncontested, it struggles to perform many functions required by 21st century museums.

Among the most serious issues:

The gallery's claustrophobic loading dock, on the west side of the Bunshaft building, is inadequate for large works of contemporary art and serves as the only point where the transport of waste materials and other building functions normally separated from art can take place.

As a result, large works of art – such as Jackson Pollock's famous painting "Convergence" – must be craned into the 1905 building's sculpture court and then carted to other parts of the building. This comes at enormous expense – in staff time, crane rental and insurance – in addition to the increased risk to works of art that often must be moved by hand through a series of narrow doorways and down vertiginous staircases.

Its understated entrance, facing Elmwood Avenue, creates a bottleneck during busy times, with nowhere for visitors to congregate except in the already cramped vestibule.

As a result, the building's climate control system is unable to maintain the proper temperature and humidity near the entrance, which means that, especially in cold months, precious wall space must remain empty or hung with works that can stand up to fluctuations in temperature.

There are also serious issues with low ceilings, fixed lighting that cannot easily be renovated, a multilevel floor that creates challenges for accessibility and the transport of art, and a circulation plan that requires food and trash to be transported through corridors hung with Picassos and Van Goghs.

Lin-Hill said the majority of incidents that endanger artworks, such as people bumping into paintings and sculptures, happen in the cramped corridors of the 1962 building rather than the comparatively spacious 1905 galleries.

But the courtyard, which Bunshaft designed as a contemplative space, is perhaps the most emblematic of the challenge the Albright-Knox faces at it tries to reinvent itself for a new generation of museum fans.

"It's this sacred internal space that is meant to be looked into, but maybe not ventured into," Lin-Hill said. "This is a lot of space right at the very, very heart of our campus. It needs to read as a space that belongs to the public."

The secretive posture of the courtyard, the relatively unadaptable galleries that surround it and the cramped entryway that greets visitors, Lin-Hill and other gallery leaders believe, send a message that is at odds with the gallery's public mission.

"We operate in the public trust. The broad public, not the exclusive public," Lin-Hill said, citing the gallery's popular "Freedom Wall" public mural project on the East Side as an example of its expanding role in the community. "It would be great if this museum had that kind of participatory vitality at its very center in the future. … This is what the museum sector as a whole is doing because it wants to have a more vital role."

Since Bunshaft's addition opened in 1962, the art world has grown exponentially, diverging into a countless thematic streams and mediums, from monumental sculptures demanding monumental spaces to purely conceptual art requiring no space at all.

The unpredictability of the art world and its growth into countless new disciplines demands a different kind of museum than Bunshaft or his contemporaries could have conceived.

This uncertainty, coupled with a desire to reconnect with segments of the public long alienated from the art world, has driven expanding museums to favor vast public spaces and highly adaptable galleries over the more intimate spaces of the past.

Recent projects, from the Cleveland Museum of Art's $320 million expansion to the $50 million renovation of the Speed Museum in Louisville, Ky., have attempted to satisfy the public's desire for more welcoming civic spaces, museums' desire to earn revenue from those spaces and artists' demands for more flexible exhibition spaces.

OMA's original concept, which would have converted the lower part of Bunshaft's buildings into educational space while blowing out its courtyard and gallery into a large entry hall accessible from the east and west sides, was of a piece with these projects.

Louis Grachos, who served as director of the Albright-Knox from 2003 to 2013 and now heads the Contemporary Austin, made the most out of Bunshaft's building during his tenure. His "Remix the Collection" series constantly shuffled what was on the walls of the building, which had remained mostly static for decades before Grachos arrived.

Though he declined to critique the way it functions, Grachos acknowledged that it does not offer enough room for the gallery's growing collection.

"The 1962 Gordon Bunshaft building is an exquisite building, and it was a pleasure to have worked with it during my tenure," he said in an email. "The only downside to the Bunshaft building was that it did not provide enough physical space for the Albright-Knox's outstanding collection."

Albright-Knox mega-donor Jeffrey Gundlach, who has criticized critics of OMA's original concept as "NYC elitists" on Twitter, did not respond to an email requesting a comment on the Bunshaft building's limitations.

John Massier, the longtime visual arts curator of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center and a frequent gallery visitor, hailed the intimate experience of being in the 1962 building, but said he was open to changes.

"I love that style of architecture, but I also understand that maybe that's not entirely useful to the future," Massier said. "But change is a constant, and even in our physical structures, change has to be acknowledged once in a while, has to be accommodated."

Others, like Buffalo-born architect Richard Gluckman, fall somewhere in the middle.

Gluckman, whose firm Gluckman Tang Architects submitted a proposal to expand the gallery to the east during Grachos' tenure, acknowledged problems with visitor circulation and art loading in Bunshaft's design. While he was opposed to OMA's first concept, he urged a solution that does not capitulate to the complaints of preservationists by building on the north side.

He compared that solution, which the gallery floated last fall, to "putting one of those prefabricated garden sheds in the backyard."

"If the administration and the architects have to take a bow to the preservationists, then they abrogate their responsibility to the institution, to the Albright-Knox, to the City of Buffalo and to the profession," Gluckman said. "There are ways to create a strong tripartite composition, just like it had to have been a challenge for Gordon Bunshaft to create that incredible binary composition."

Many advocates of OMA's original concept at the gallery and in the community contend the 1962 building is a rigid embodiment of a rigid era that will not yield to 21st century demands without radical changes.

For his fiercest advocates, Bunshaft's achievement is an inviolable product of its time whose functional shortcomings pale in comparison to its importance in the history of American architecture.

Right now, behind closed doors at the Albright-Knox and in the Manhattan offices of OMA, the demands of history and the needs of the future – of visual beauty and practical problems – are facing off. A compromise is likely to emerge in a matter of months.

Until then, Lin-Hill suggested, the gallery will continue to pursue its mission and push for a solution that satisfies everyone.

"The goal here is not to embalm the museum and its collection. It's to bring them to life," Lin-Hill said. "People want this building to be vital. To make this building vital, some of its challenges have to be mitigated."

Buffalo-born billionaire and philanthropist Jeffrey Gundlach has pledged an additional $10 million to fund the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's expansion, and he purchased a house near the gallery that he plans to renovate.

The pledge and home purchase, first reported by WIVB-TV and confirmed by Albright-Knox director Janne Sirén, further solidified Gundlach's already historic contribution to the museum that will bear his name when it opens in 2021.

His original gift of $42.5 million already ranked as the largest single donation to a cultural institution in Western New York history.

Gundlach, in an email to The Buffalo News, said the additional pledge was designed to "help realize the courageous expansion of the project's vision."

"The Buffalo of today is not the Buffalo of recent decades past," he said in the email. "The Buffalo of today has pride and economic momentum. The Buffalo of today can and should stand on its own two feet, even if it needs a little assistance getting there from time-to-time."

Like Gundlach's original gift, the pledge is designed to motivate others to support the gallery's expansion project, which has so far raised about $125 million of a $155 million goal. In a plan designed by Gundlach, all money the gallery raises in the next year will be matched, up to $10 million.

How fate, his Mom and the Garden Walk brought Gundlach's gift to the Albright-Knox

Sirén, reached by phone Wednesday evening, praised Gundlach's continued generosity to the museum.

"It's extraordinary and visionary and it helps us catalyze the second round, the final second round, of the capital campaign," Sirén said.

Sirén added that Gundlach's second gift will help the gallery in its effort to "engage members of the Buffalo diaspora" as well as national foundations that were not able to contribute during the fundraising campaign's first round.

"Our fundraising efforts will be national," Sirén said, with a special focus on "individuals who may have ties to Buffalo as well as collectors who may not have ties to Buffalo but are interested in the work the Albright-Knox does."

Gundlach, 58, echoed Sirén's hope that his expanded pledge would encourage other donors, both Buffalo expats and foundations, "to take part in what I believe history will judge as a truly transformative effort even when considered on the global stage."

After facing pressure from preservationists over plans to radically alter a beloved building by Gordon Bunshaft, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery announced Friday that it will consider building on a different site.

"The museum and its development team will re-examine an expansion option on the north and northwest side of the campus connected to the 1905 Building to determine whether this could meet the museum's needs, while also minimizing impacts on the Albright-Knox's historic buildings," according to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in a statement Friday afternoon.

On Nov. 3, the gallery's director, Janne Sirén, met with a four-member subcommittee of the Buffalo Preservation Board to discuss their concerns.

According to Preservation Board Chair Paul McDonnell, gallery officials also recently met with staff from the New York State Historic Preservation Office to gain a clearer understanding of preservationists' objections to the original concept.

"We totally understood their issues, but obviously some of the options were going to dramatically damage the historic fabric of the building," McDonnell said.

McDonnell called the alternative concept "much less invasive" than the one that raised the ire of the board in June.

The gallery shared images showing a rough illustration of the proposed concept with Preservation Board members, but declined to share those images with The Buffalo News.

The gallery's news release emphasized that the original concept, which would reconfigure the current galleries and courtyard of the Bunshaft building into an airy entry hall and pedestrian pass-through, is still on the table.

Will preservationists again change the course of Albright-Knox expansion?

"The museum continues to believe that the initial concept provides an excellent operating solution for the future Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum," the gallery's statement read.

In a phone interview, Albright-Knox Communications Director Maria Morreale dismissed questions about the change in plan, saying the gallery had "nothing to add" to what was in its released statement.

Morreale declined comment on whether the concept presented in June was still feasible given the community's opposition and the preservation community's claims that it violates state preservation standards.

Asked whether the gallery's consideration of a second option would result in any delays in the construction timeline previously announced, Morreale said: "We don't know."

Sirén, who has experience with museum building projects that have run into snags, has previously said the construction process would take about two years and likely be completed by October 2021.

Though renderings of the original concept have been widely circulated, Morreale declined to share any images of the second concept.

"In the next couple of weeks I'm sure we'll have some updates," she said.

In September, about three months after a controversy erupted over its plans to alter Bunshaft's building, the gallery announced the hiring of two preservation firms -- Buffalo's Preservation Studios and PDBW out of New York City -- to help guide its expansion.

Since Preservation Studios was hired in September, its Director of Municipal Services, Tom Yots, has declined to speak with The News or the public about its role in the process.

Yots, on Friday afternoon, again declined to discuss the firm's work on the project, writing that he had "nothing to add" before entertaining any questions.

The gallery also would not answer questions about its working process with the preservation firms it has hired.

"Good design emerges through an iterative process, which sometimes includes reconsidering aspects of previous ideas while also introducing new possibilities that may be worth developing," Sirén said in a statement. "We seek an optimal solution, one that will give Buffalo the expansive, inclusive, and architecturally inspiring museum the community has told us it wants."

Preservationists, at least for the moment, were taking heart in the gallery's announcement.

"I always say that architecture is like juggling a dozen balls in the air," McDonnell said. "Up until a few weeks ago I didn't think preservation was one of those balls. But now it is."

The new Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, fueled by an expected $155 million budget and slated to break ground in early 2019, could take up to two and a half years to build.

Janne Sirén, director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, shared the estimated construction timeline during an annual member meeting Wednesday evening in the gallery's auditorium.

"It is still a bit early to estimate exactly how long this project, which includes sensitive historic renovation components, will take, but we look forward to sharing those details with you as they crystallize," Sirén said.

He then offered a construction estimate of "two to two-and-a-half years."

Albright-Knox Communications Director Maria Morreale said the gallery could not currently say whether it will be completely closed during the entire construction period or part of it.

"We probably will not have an accurate and complete answer to the question until we are much further along in the process," Morreale said in an email last week, in response to a question about how long the gallery would be closed. "Also, please note that a closure or partial closure of our Elmwood Avenue facility does not mean that we would not be operating and running programs."

The gallery has so far raised just shy of $122 million of its $155 million goal, said outgoing board president Thomas R. Hyde in his report.

At the meeting, Buffalo philanthropist Alice F. Jacobs was named president of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the gallery's parent organization.

Jacobs, long affiliated with the Buffalo Women's Foundation and the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and a member of a family known for its work with Buffalo's philanthropic community, will take over from Hyde, who had headed the board since 2013.

She first joined the board in 2014.

While the primary focus of the museum is on the expansion, Jacobs said she views her new position as a chance to improve the gallery's national reputation and expand its contributions to the lives of Western New Yorkers.

She also mentioned the public release of the gallery's new strategic plan, which the gallery will share early next year.

"To me, the museum represents a unique opportunity because it's a world-class asset in Western New York that can do a lot to further engage our community together," Jacobs said.

She added the gallery also has an opportunity to "help with the economic and social revival of Buffalo."

Expanding the gallery's educational programs is one of Jacobs' goals, along with sustaining its popular, taxpayer-funded public art program and shepherding the organization through what could be a long period of construction.

Jacobs, a former attorney at Hodgson Russ LLP, has a bachelor's degree from Colgate University and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She's a founding member of the Buffalo Women's Foundation and serves on the boards of the Community Foundation and Elmwood Franklin School. She has co-chaired the United Way's annual fundraising campaign with her husband, co-chief executive of the Delaware North Companies, Jerry Jacobs Jr.

Jacobs' interest in art shares a similar origin story with that of Albright-Knox mega-donor Jeffrey Gundlach, whose $42.5 million contribution changed the scope and ambition of the expansion project.

Like Gundlach, she was influenced by a family interest in art that, as a young woman, she did not share.

"I actually grew up with a mother who dragged me to art museums way more than I wanted to," Jacobs said. "Surprisingly, those things come around to you later in life and you realize that your parent has actually done a great service for you and created a passion and a love for something that you might otherwise not have had."

Sirén, in a statement, praised Jacobs' commitment to the gallery and characterized her as a worthy successor to Hyde.

"Together with Alice we will continue to reach for the stars," Sirén said in the statement. "I couldn't be more delighted at her appointment as the 39th president of our board. Alice is an outstanding leader and an ardent supporter of the Albright-Knox and its work, and I am looking forward to working closely with her as we continue the growth of this fantastic museum for the benefit of our community."

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which has faced criticism from preservationists over planned alterations to its 1962 addition, has announced the hiring of two consulting firms specializing in preservation issues.

In a statement released Monday, the gallery announced that it will work with the Buffalo-based group Preservation Studios, New York City-based PBDW Architects and other groups to "review and adjust this initial concept, to make progress toward the first iteration of an architectural design."

Albright-Knox communication director Maria Morreale said in an email that the hiring of preservation consultants had been part of the gallery's plan since the fall of 2016, when the timeline for the project was announced. The firms were identified and hired in the spring and summer of this year by OMA, the architect the gallery hired to design the expansion, she added.

According to the release, the gallery will soon announce another series of public meetings on the expansion project and will welcome "continued opportunities for public input, which has already significantly shaped the proposed concept."

"Based on our extensive experience working with public agencies and the Secretary of the Interior's Standards on many projects with historic preservation components, we are advising the Albright-Knox team as the proposal moves from a concept toward a design," Yots, the former executive director of Preservation Buffalo Niagara.

Yots' firm, he continued, would work to ensure "that the eventual proposal will sensitively address the historic resources on the site, including the Frederick Law Olmsted Park, and the buildings by E.B. Green and Gordon Bunshaft, while providing the critically needed expansion of gallery space."

Will preservationists again change the course of Albright-Knox expansion?

When the Albright-Knox released the initial renderings showing the framework of OMA's design for the expansion, preservationists took issue with the plan's treatment of Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 addition.

At the heart of their opposition is the gallery's plan to eliminate the central courtyard and surrounding galleries of the Bunshaft addition, leaving only its glass-box auditorium completely intact and modifying its lower-level galleries into educational space.

Shortly after the renderings were released, Buffalo Preservation Board President Paul McDonnell sent a letter to gallery director Janne Sirén arguing that the plan violated the Secretary of the Interior's standards for historic preservation and implored the gallery to work with the board to address preservationists' concerns.

In a phone interview on Tuesday, McDonnell praised the gallery's decision, saying that it demonstrated officials' sensitivity to the historic significance of the site and of Bunshaft's understated addition.

"We're glad that they're acknowledging the importance of it and hiring experts to basically protect it," he said. "We just want to make sure we're part of the process and I think this makes sure that we are. We're anxious to sit down with OMA and the Albright-Knox to further discuss their plans."

Both Yots and Morreale declined to speak with a reporter about what the work of the preservation firms will entail or to discuss the galley's preservation goals, even broadly.

"We will be sending these updates periodically to let people know where we are at," Morreale wrote, "but we have nothing further to add at this point."

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In the summer of 1957, the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy announced plans to expand the Albright Art Gallery by plopping a modernist box onto the east steps of its original building.

Public reaction to the plan, conceived by architect Paul Schweikher and approved in secret by the board, was damning. The gallery changed course, enlisting the Buffalo-born architect Gordon Bunshaft to design a new building on a separate site.

Bunshaft's austere and respectful addition, a sleek modern counterpoint to the neoclassical architecture of E.B. Green's 1905 building, opened to near-unanimous praise in 1962. In its first year of operation, Bunshaft's building helped to draw a record 782,815 people through the gallery's doors.

But now, after Albright-Knox officials announced plans to replace the galleries and courtyard of Bunshaft's addition with a grand public space, local and national preservationists, critics and defenders of the architect's legacy are hoping for a repeat of history.

Reaction in local preservationist circles to the renderings released by architecture firm OMA was generally negative, prompting a strongly worded letter from Buffalo's Preservation Board warning the gallery about the building's status as a landmark protected from radical renovations.

And while Buffalo's preservation community sometimes plays the role of vocal minority on major projects such as this, criticism of the plan is also mounting from national experts who consider Bunshaft's 1962 building to be one of the architect's greatest achievements.

"Let's be clear: This is a disaster for the City of Buffalo," wrote Nicholas Adams, a professor of architectural history at Vassar College and an expert on Bunshaft's work, in an email to The News. "Buffalo needs to repeat its history here, reject an insensitive proposal, and avoid the destruction of an important work of architecture."

Adams, whose biography of Bunshaft is due out in 2018 from Yale University Press and who co-curated the Central Library's current exhibition "Building Buffalo," placed the 1962 addition among Buffalo's architectural gems: Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building; Richard Upjohn's St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral; the H.H. Richardson complex; Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House; and Eliel and Eero Saarinen's Kleinhans Music Hall.

"There is no good reason to alter the building other than to appear hip and contemporary or else to be large enough to warrant adding Mr. Gundlach's name to the building," said Carol Herselle Krinsky, a New York University art history professor and author of the 1988 book "Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill." She was referring to mega-donor Jeffrey Gundlach, whose name will adorn the new museum when it opens in 2021.

OMA's Shohei Shigematsu, who is leading the design of the project with a team of architects based in New York City, said he views the landmark status of the Bunshaft building and the limitations that come along with it as one of the "essential drivers of the design, rather than impediments to the design."

"We’re certainly sensitive to respecting this important component of the campus, just as we’re sensitive to respecting the 1905 E.B. Green Building and Olmsted's Delaware Park," he wrote in an email to The News while traveling in Asia. "It's an honor to be invited to continue in the legacy of these esteemed designers, who have already proven that innovation and preservation can coexist on the Albright-Knox Campus."

Shigematsu noted that OMA has considerable experience with historic preservation, having completed four cultural projects in sensitive historic contexts. These include transforming a gin distillery into a cultural space for the Prada Foundation in Milan; renovating a "Soviet-era canteen" into a contemporary art museum in Moscow; placing a new building next to a historic church on protected parkland in Quebec City; and renovating a landmarked Art Deco building for the Shigematsu-designed Faena Arts District in Miami.

Closer to home, at Cornell University in Ithaca, OMA added a new building to the campus linking two landmarked buildings. That building, featuring a prominent cantilever, has earned mixed reviews.

"Like it or not, Bunshaft's 1962 addition did attempt to respect the existing structure and the landscape. Today, modern buildings of that time and the landscapes within and outside of them are regularly undervalued and endangered," said Michael Tomlan, the director of the graduate program in historic preservation planning at Cornell's College of Architecture, Art and Planning. "The cantilevered 'floating observation gallery' is too large and imposing for the site, simply an attempt to create an 'architectural icon.' "

Shigematsu said that OMA is "currently monitoring all of the conversations around the concept, positive and negative," but will hew to what it called the "project desirables" that the gallery laid out after a series of public meetings.

"I’m personally interested in using architecture to reveal layers of history," he said. "With all these projects, having an open dialogue – with the local community, state and federal boards, and a dialogue between the old and new – has been critical to the success of the project."

Albright-Knox Art Gallery director Janne Sirén characterized the outcry of critics and preservationists as premature because the renderings the gallery and OMA released do not represent final designs.

He also noted that the gallery is under no obligation to share its process with the public.

"Our process has been premised, for better or for worse, on a degree of openness and a sort of democratic principle," said Sirén, whose museum receives about $500,000 annually from Erie County taxpayers in addition to $20 million in public funding for the expansion project from state and local sources. "This is a private foundation, so there's nothing forcing our arm on this. There is no obligation for us to do what we have done."

Sirén also promoted a utilitarian view of architecture sure to further rankle preservationists, for whom the gallery's existing buildings are as sacrosanct as its Picassos and Pollocks.

"We are also not in the business of collecting buildings. We are an art museum and our service is to our public and to the artworks in our custody," Sirén said. "The buildings are here to serve us, and not us as the staff, but the public and the art. That is our foremost responsibility. The buildings are the utilitarian tools, in some respect, that allow us to accomplish our mission."

Buffalo architect Mike Tunkey, of the Grand Island-based firm Cannon Design, called for a calm and open dialogue between critics and supporters of OMA's plan.

"I tend to believe that there's a version of the scheme that OMA is looking at that could respect the integrity of the Bunshaft building," Tunkey said. "If both sides participated honestly in a process where we discuss the concerns about the integrity of the building and also looked openly and with a creative spirit at what OMA and the Albright-Knox are trying to do, I believe that at least there's a possibility that we could come to some creative solution."

Buffalo-based preservationist and architect Barbara Campagna echoed Tunkey's hope for a more open process, and said the gallery should have included preservation experts earlier in the design process.

"They're just not doing the process right," said Campagna, a preservation consultant. "They need to have a really good preservation consultant who knows how to interpret what character-defining features mean, to assist them."

Concerns from Bunshaft fans recalls the controversy of 1957-58, when Buffalonians expressed opposition to Paul Schweikher's plan to modify the gallery's original building.

After releasing the plans, the gallery received a torrent of complaints. The plans called for the construction of a new building on the Hoyt Lake side of the gallery, eliminating E.B. Green's grand east steps and installing a low-lying glass structure running the length of the 1905 building.

The reaction was furious and negative. And it influenced the gallery's subsequent selection of Buffalo-born architect Bunshaft to design its 1962 building, the conservatism of which emerged as much from the public outcry of 1957 as from Bunshaft's austere style.

"The addition has the air of a compromise," said Buffalo artist Hugh Laidman at the time of Schweikher's proposal in a story by News critic Larry Griffis, "an attempt to placate the lovers of (the) traditional by hiding the addition in the guise of a pedestal, while at the same time using enough contemporary architectural clichés to appease those who favor (the) modern."

Griffis, in a 1957 story criticizing Schweikher's plan, seemed to anticipate the concerns of today's preservationists.

"A completely modern building with its own purpose and character would be an outstanding contribution to the culture of Buffalo," Griffis wrote. "It might in the future command the same protective interests being expressed by our citizenry today for the present gallery."

LOS ANGELES – The first thing you’ll see if you are brave enough to peer over the gate of Jeffrey Gundlach's $15 million estate in Pacific Palisades is your own reflection in the stainless steel surface of a half-ton sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

The first thing you’ll likely hear is the bark of a security guard aiming a semiautomatic pistol at your head.

"If somebody's interested in causing me trouble, they already know that it's going to take a number of people. Some of them will die," said Gundlach, whose art collection was robbed in 2012.

Gundlach's rotating, six-man security detail operates out of a military-style command center at the edge of his property, where he lives with his girlfriend. It might seem excessive, but, like all of the Buffalo-born billionaire's pursuits – in academics, business and art – reflects his distaste for half-measures.

Gundlach, 57, whose $42.5 million donation to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery last year was the largest to a cultural organization in Western New York history, has no interest in being a minor player.

That has been a theme throughout his life, whether as a hyper-competitive student at Amherst High School, a renegade Ph.D. student at Yale University or as a rock drummer in Los Angeles, a career he abandoned to pursue his true calling after watching an episode of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," according to his favorite bit of personal lore.

The theme continued in 2009, when he launched his new firm, DoubleLine Capital, in the wake of a messy public divorce with his former employer.

"I don't spread things thin," Gundlach told the News in September, after his Albright-Knox donation was announced. "I focus deeply. I do that with my work, with my company. I want to make a difference to the things that I apply myself to and not just, as T.S. Eliot said, mete out my life in teaspoons."

And while he has spent the last 15 years building one of the most impressive private art collections on the West Coast and one of the most successful investment management firms in the United States, Gundlach is turning his attention to more enduring projects.

"I could either buy another picture, or I could massively transform the Buffalo art museum," he said in an April interview in his offices on the 18th floor of the Wells Fargo tower in downtown Los Angeles. "It's just badly in need of a transformational project."

Transformational projects are a specialty of Gundlach's.

Case in point: himself.

The youngest of three brothers, Gundlach grew up in a modest house on Harlem Road in Snyder where his mother, Carol Gundlach, still lives. His father, Arthur, who died in 2013, was a chemist for Pierce and Stevens Chemical Corporation whose claim to fame was inventing a highly durable wax widely used to coat the floors of bowling alleys.

Even now, despite the fact that he lives next door to Stevie Nicks in a Tuscan-style villa perched on the edge of a Santa Monica canyon, Gundlach still carries hints of his middle-class upbringing.

He wears tailored suits on company webcasts and financial news shows, but he inhabits them with a hint of discomfort. During an interview, he was dressed in brown-and-orange checkered shirt, brown slacks and brown shoes.

Artworks by Andy Warhol, Clyfford Still, Jeff Koons, Donald Judd, Willem de Kooning, Joseph Cornell, Piet Mondrian, Cy Twombly and others share space in his house with a painting done by a largely unknown artist: his maternal grandmother Helen Fuchs Gundlach's pastoral scene from 1929 depicting her West Seneca garden.

Look hard enough and you will find clues from Gundlach's ancestry that suggest a future love of art. Look even harder and his status as a bond trader with a net worth of $1.7 billion, whose predictions in the financial press move markets, begins to emerge.

Carol Gundlach said the youngest of her three sons, even as a child, was intent on succeeding. More than anyone in the immediate family, she said, Jeffrey took after his uncle, Robert Gundlach, a physicist who invented much of the technology used in the Xerox copy machine.

"He was a very intense little fellow," she said in a phone interview from the family home, where prints of famous Albright-Knox paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe and Picasso and photographs of family members visiting the gallery hang in her kitchen. "I found him a very easy child, a very eager child, to do well."

Drew Gundlach, who has built a successful construction business focusing on historic restoration work, said his younger brother always wanted to get it right.

He recalled a day from their youth when he taught Jeffrey to ride a bicycle in their Snyder driveway.

"There was a little rock wall along the side of the house," he said. "He’d fall off that bike and crash into the wall. He was all banged up, but he got right back up and back on the bike. At the end of the day, he was riding that two-wheeled bicycle. No training wheels."

It was a clear precursor of a life to come.

"He follows things through all the way to the end," Drew Gundlach said.

'I always wanted to succeed'

The Gundlachs were culturally active, taking frequent trips to the Albright-Knox, the Buffalo History Museum and Buffalo Museum of Science.

Carol Gundlach said she believes those experiences and the family's artistic background – her mother was a trained pianist and her mother-in-law a successful painter – shaped her sons.

"They have startled me," she said of her sons' successes in academia, business and philanthropy. "I don't know where it comes from. My whole life is blessed beyond anything I would ever have dreamed."

Jeffrey Gundlach, too, acknowledges the advantages of his upbringing.

"I was given skills and opportunities," he said. "I mean, sure, Harlem Road between Main and Sheridan? Not the greatest opportunity in the world. But I’m a white guy that got a scholarship to an Ivy League college."

Partially out of a belief that the family would not mix well with the upper classes, Gundlach's grandparents prevented his mother from attending Vassar on a full scholarship.

"It's a class thing: You don't fit in," he said. "There was a lot of class-consciousness 50 years, 70 years ago in Buffalo. ‘That's not our place.’ "

When his other brother, Brad, now a college history professor in Illinois, applied to Princeton University, the family argued against it. But he went anyway, smoothing the path for Gundlach's academic rise.

After discovering a preternatural talent for math, Gundlach earned straight A's at Amherst High School and a full scholarship to study math and philosophy at Dartmouth College. When he wasn't playing in his neighborhood, competing on the WIVB trivia show "It's Academic" or practicing his timpani part for his high school orchestra, he was studying.

"I was just a guy that was trying to get A's," he said. "I always wanted to succeed."

Gundlach was part of a group of high-achievers at Amherst High. One of them, his neighbor and classmate Charles Zukowski, is a long-tenured electrical engineering professor at Columbia University. He recalled Gundlach as a happy-go-lucky kid, eager to play practical jokes on his brothers and compete against neighborhood kids in pickup games.

"We were pretty competitive, in a fun way. Everybody wanted to do well," Zukowski said. "In our social group, everybody valued education; everyone assumed they were going to college. There was friendly competition in school and on the SATs, and all that stuff."

Not skipping a beat

Gundlach graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth in 1981 and entered the mathematics Ph.D. program at Yale. But he dropped out after his proposed thesis, a radical argument about the concept of infinity that challenged the underpinnings of modern mathematics, was rejected by his adviser.

Disenchanted with academia, Gundlach moved back to Buffalo to work construction jobs with his brother Drew, waiting for his next opportunity to be a major player.

It soon came in the form of an offer from fellow musician Bev Eyre, whom he had met as a student at Dartmouth.
"A guy who I’d been playing in a band with said, ‘Let's go to LA. There's a big music scene out there. We’ll be rock and roll people. I said, ‘I got nothing better to do.’ "

So, in 1983, the Ph.D dropout became a glam-rock drummer.

He played in a series of Los Angeles rock bands, the best known of which was called Radical Flat, a nod to his math background.

"He was an incredible drummer," Eyre, who could not be reached for comment, told Business Insider in 2012. "He never missed a beat, like a machine gun. He could play so many cool rhythms, switch tempos, doing something real fast, then a little slower."

After chasing his music dream for two years and building a small following, the life of a struggling drummer lost its charm. One night in the mid-1980s, in an oft-repeated story, his fortunes changed.

He found himself sitting alone in his grungy West Hollywood apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes for furniture and a donated TV that required a pair of pliers to change the channel, when he came across an episode in progress of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

Cue Gundlach's impression of TV host Robin Leach.

"We have a special show tonight. We’re going to be counting down the 10 most lucrative professions," he said. "I’m like, cool. I could use a little direction."

The No. 1 one profession, Leach informed him, was investment banker.

"They said you need to work very hard, and you need a very analytic mind," Gundlach said. "I’m like, check and check."

The 'Bond King'

Tantalized by the trappings of an investment banker's lucrative lifestyle, Gundlach grabbed a copy of the Los Angeles Yellow Pages. He flipped to a section labeled "investment managers," figuring this was the same as "investment bankers."

With no experience or knowledge of investment, he wrote letters of interest to the 23 companies that had paid for bold-faced listings. Trust Company of the West hired him on faith and shuffled him into a minor job in its bond department.

Between the day he was hired and the day he started, Gundlach devoured everything he could about the bond market, deriving the formulas that undergird the market from scratch so he could understand them from the inside out.

"The day I started, I knew more than anybody that worked there about bonds," he said.

Within six months, Gundlach, at 26, was managing Chrysler's pension fund. Over a 24-year career at TCW, he built the firm's bond business into a national powerhouse.

He earned a reputation as a smart analyst with a knack for accurate predictions. In 2006, he called then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan "out of his mind" for saying – prematurely, as it turned out – that the housing bust had bottomed out.

That foresight allowed Gundlach to protect his clients’ money through the financial crisis that followed, soon earning him the title of "Bond King," solidifying his reputation as one of America's most successful investors and elevating him to oracle status in the financial press.

"He is a strong personality in the industry, and he has grown quite the reputation," said Steven Gattuso, a Buffalo-based financial adviser who campaigned to bring Gundlach to speak to a group of fellow industry members at the Albright-Knox in 2015. "He's one of a handful of people that can command some media attention when he makes a prediction or an observation about what's happening in financial markets."

Because of his reputation for accurate predictions, Gundlach is sought-after by financial news outlets and appears several times a year on CNBC and Fox Business News. His speeches are live-blogged and dissected by investment professionals for clues about the future.

Gary Schreier, senior vice president for programming at the Fox Business Network, described Gundlach as a straight-talker with a reputation for accuracy. A case in point: his prediction that Donald Trump would win the Republican presidential nomination and the general election.

"His immense value is his track record, his knowledge, his acumen, his confidence and also his self-assuredness. He says what's on his mind to a large degree. He's not overly careful about parsing his words," Schreier said. "That's unique and makes him someone we appreciate."

A fight and vindication

Gundlach's success in piloting his company and clients through the housing crisis also precipitated one of the biggest dramas in his life, when, in 2009, he was forced out of TCW and began an ugly legal battle. He said the company was plotting to steal millions of dollars in future fees, the fruits of his team's work during the financial crisis. TCW said that he and his team stole proprietary information in a secret scheme to launch their own business.

"I worked so hard. So hard," he said. "I was working till midnight, getting up at 5 a.m., killing ourselves. My reward for doing that was they tried to steal the business."

The subsequent court battle played out in Los Angeles Times headlines and on blogs, where developments in the case were reported with O.J. Simpson-level detail.

In the fight, according to court filings, TCW accused Gundlach of a litany of improprieties. These included keeping a trove of drug paraphernalia, hardcore pornography and sex toys in his office. In a memo to his staff, Gundlach wrote that the material uncovered by TCW contained "vestiges of closed chapters of my life."

Gundlach's countersuit accused TCW of attempting to defraud him and his team of their future earnings by forcing him out of the company. What's more, he accused TCW management of hiring private investigators to collect incriminating information on the sex lives of him and his team members. In his case, he said, they did not succeed because he and his wife had already decided to divorce by the time he began a relationship with another woman. (Gundlach has one daughter, now 26, with his ex-wife and former bandmate, Nancy Draper.)

TCW spokesman Douglas Morris declined to address the allegations, noting that the company is under different management and does not comment on former employees or competitors.

In the end, the court ordered TCW to pay Gundlach and three members of his team $67 million in back pay and denied TCW's request for damages. Gundlach was found responsible for breaching his fiduciary duty to TCW, a finding that carried no financial penalty and which TCW was thus unable to appeal.

Asked how he felt about the verdict, Gundlach said, "They massively lost. It was 67 to zero."

Gundlach becomes Gundlach

When any of DoubleLine Capital's 210 employees exits the elevator on the 18th floor of the Wells Fargo Tower, Gundlach's brushwork greets them.

He spent the better part of a year painting the entry sign for DoubleLine, which, like the firm's name, was inspired by a Piet Mondrian painting that hangs on the second floor of his home.

As with everything in Gundlach's life, DoubleLine is shot through with art.

The company's WiFi network is named "Rothko," after the abstract painter.

Its conference rooms are named after famous modern artists, several of which contain actual pieces by those artists.

The entire DoubleLine investment team can fit around a massive table in the Warhol room, where a 1963 Andy Warhol car crash picture, "Five Deaths Twice," hangs on the wall. The Judd conference room features a Donald Judd sculpture mounted next to a wide window looking out on the financial district of Los Angeles, with the Hollywood sign visible. In the Calder conference room, a Calder mobile dangles from the ceiling.

"The rooms aren't sterile here," said Robert Cohen, who joined DoubleLine in 2012 and serves as its director of global developed credit. "You walk into a conference room here and there's something lively happening."

Gundlach does not have a corner office, preferring instead to survey his domain of traders and analysts from a desk that might belong to a low-level accountant, save for one item: A football inscribed to Gundlach by DoubleLine client and Buffalo Bills running back LeSean McCoy: "Thanks for taking care of my money," the inscription reads. "Go Bills."

Before announcing his donation to the Albright-Knox last year, Gundlach's name was in the local news for another high-profile proposition: He was part of a group including Jim Kelly that briefly entertained buying the Buffalo Bills, but eventually dropped the bid in the face of strong competition.

Kelly declined to be interviewed for this story.

Gundlach is a long-suffering Bills fan, but his interest in football is dwarfed by his passion for art. And although he grew up visiting the Albright-Knox, Gundlach didn't gain an appreciation for modern and contemporary art until a 2002 trip to the Tate Gallery in London, where he came across a man sketching a Mondrian painting.

"It's like I’m hit by a thunderbolt," Gundlach said in September of the painting that changed his life. "All of a sudden, at that moment, all I cared about was more modern art."

Almost immediately, Gundlach began collecting 20th century pieces. Every room of his house – from the living room where a Calder mobile spins in front of a $28 million Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe to a hallway where a Diebenkorn landscape dialogues with a transcendent Mondrian – feels like a conversation across art history.

In his vestibule, for example, Robert Rauschenberg's excellent 1955 piece "Monk" hangs on a circular wall opposite a pristine stack of Donald Judd drawers from 1975. In a hall leading to his study hangs a luminous Willem de Kooning from 1946.

"This is de Kooning when he just becomes de Kooning," Gundlach said. It's an observation he makes frequently about the artworks in his collection, many of which capture his favorite artists at the cusp of an artistic revelation.

Gundlach, before he became Gundlach, was just another art enthusiast who bought California landscapes. Now, he's a modern art expert with an encyclopedic knowledge of the artists he collects, a house filled with art books and insights drawn from his own analytical mind.

A game – and name – changer

His knowledge of modern and contemporary art and deep curiosity sets him apart from most other high-profile collectors, said Amy Cappellazzo, the Buffalo-born art expert at Sotheby's who helped to coordinate Gundlach's gift to the Albright-Knox.

"It's like when you see a child who has natural athletic ability," Cappellazzo said in an interview last year. "He's very, very passionate and very, very, searingly intellectual about it. Once he knows an object or is curious about an artist, it's full-on research, deep."

Albright-Knox Art Gallery Director Janne Sirén, who worked with Gundlach on last year's fundraising campaign, admitted that he has to brush up on his art history before meeting with Gundlach. And he has a Ph.D. in the subject.

"Jeffrey knows more about Mondrian than most people that I know," Sirén said. "When I go to visit with him, I’m browsing through my Mondrian biographies, for example, because I don't want to be in a situation where I can't carry a conversation with a person as knowledgeable as he is."

Sirén also said it was Gundlach's desire to go big that pushed him and other gallery officials to seek 50,000 square feet of new gallery space instead of a smaller amount. This was because Gundlach insisted that the gallery be on par with what he sees as its peer institutions: The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Gundlach's home, his art collection, his approach to business, and his entire way of life reflects this insatiable curiosity and commitment.

If he's going to go to Amherst High or Dartmouth, he figured that he may as well graduate at the top of his class. If he's going to learn how the bond market works, he reckoned, he may as well learn it better than anyone else in the industry. If he's going to buy a portrait by Andy Warhol, he might as well know twice as much about it as the person he is bidding against.

And if he's going to make a donation to an art museum, Gundlach may as well make sure that it has an earth-shattering effect.

"I’m in the fixed income hall of fame. I’ve got the most successful startup investment management company in the history of the business. I don't have anything to prove," he said. "To people who like to criticize me, I say: So, what major museum is named after you?"

Jeffrey Gundlach isn't done yet.

The Buffalo-born billionaire said Thursday that he potentially could donate millions more to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's expansion project to help it close a $30 million funding gap and meet the gallery's $155 million goal.

"It's certainly not impossible that I could help out some more," said Gundlach, whose contribution of $42.5 million to the gallery's expansion project already ranks as the largest private individual donation to a cultural organization in Western New York history. "We're not going to let this thing fall short by $5 million. It's just not going to happen. We'll figure out a way to get there."

The way to get there, Gundlach suggested, is likely to involve his signature on another check. He said he could potentially be on the hook for more than $50 million by the time the campaign has reached its goal.

Gundlach said that he has discussed the idea for a matching campaign aimed at national foundations to raise the rest of the money with Albright-Knox director Janne Sirén. It would be similar to the one that brought the Albright-Knox past its original goal of $80 million in the span of eight weeks last summer.

"He's a visionary," Siren said of Gundlach and his latest gesture of goodwill toward his native city. "Of course we at the Albright-Knox are thrilled with Jeffrey's extraordinary generosity and his unprecedented support."

That campaign, orchestrated to spur private donors and governments from Buffalo and beyond to dig deep to support the project, earned national attention for its speed and success.

Since that campaign was completed in September, the scope of the project has grown considerably, nearly doubling its budget from $80 million to $155 million. The budget includes $20 million in public funding from taxpayers in the City of Buffalo, Erie County and across New York State.

Preliminary plans for the size and shape of the expansion were revealed last week. They include two new buildings – one placed underground along the west side of the gallery and another floating between its two existing buildings – along with a vast public entry hall and the restoration of parkland over its current parking lot.

The underground building is something Gundlach said he was committed to, in part because it brings the gallery closer to its desired goal of adding 50,000 square feet of exhibit space.

"I've definitely been pushing for that. I just don't see the point of a half-step here," he said. "If you only do an incremental change, it's not worth it. The idea was to aim high."

Gundlach did not mention which national foundations his campaign is targeting, but he said he is confident that the gallery will meet its goal.

"We're pretty much on the cleanup phase of the fundraising," he said. "I can't give anything specific. I'm just saying that I've discussed with Janne the potential to match some other gifts."

email: [email protected]

Albright-Knox raises $100 million with help from Buffalo-born billionaire

Architect Shohei Shigematsu walked Buffalonians through dozens of ideas for his firm's new design for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery expansion Wednesday night in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center.

The one he and the gallery finally settled on – which restores two acres of green space to its Delaware Park campus, while integrating two new gallery buildings and an airy public entry hall into its existing footprint – earned rave reviews from those in attendance.

[Gallery: Albright-Knox Art Gallery expansion plans]

"I love the fact that there's so much green, that they're keeping all the green and making it open and airy," said Kate Soudant, who has followed the expansion process closely and attended several public meetings on the project. "I think that's bold."

In the plan, conceived by Shigematsu and his New York-based team at the architecture firm OMA, the gallery's existing parking lot will disappear. The result, he said, during a 30-minute presentation, would be the addition of 14 percent more green space to the gallery's campus, which if all goes to plan will contain 80 percent green space.

Gerald Mead, a Buffalo artist and curator, said he was impressed by the presentation, in which Shigematsu ticked through a series of design concepts and sketches that ranged from the austere to the outrageous.

The firm is well-known for its exhaustive research process, which produces hundreds of concept drawings, foam models and inspiration boards with playful elements.

In one slide, for example, a human hand was shown placing a rectangular structure on top of the gallery's existing courtyard. In another, a gargantuan structure jutted out over the west side of the campus like some kind of alien spaceship that Shigematsu called "the longest cantilever in the world."

Albright-Knox expansion will bury parking, create new entry hall

The final choice was much more elegant and austere, paying deference both to E.B. Green's 1905 neoclassical building and Gordon Bunshaft's 1962 auditorium.

"There is not a negative about the entire project," Mead said. "They really did their homework. What impressed me the most is when they went back and actually saw the E.B. Green expansion plan. I don't think there's a negative. There's no net loss, there's only a net gain."

Shigematsu and Albright-Knox Art Gallery Director Janne Sirén both stressed that the renderings displayed on Wednesday were merely "volume placements" and shouldn't be taken as literal renderings of what the finished buildings will look like. More specific renderings will be released in November, after the project reaches the end of its schematic design phase.

Asked if he intended to make the new floating volume above the existing courtyard into a rectangular, box-like shape, Shigematsu suggested he was thinking of something more unorthodox.

"Because there is a perfect box next to it, I would like to make it if possible not so boxy," he said, referring to Bunshaft's auditorium. "But here I would like to make something, I wouldn't say organic, but soft. It might be boxy, but the material we use might be soft, something that has a depth or something that has a formal reaction to the context."

The mood in the room on Wednesday suggested that those most closely invested in the process were pleased with the initial look.

"I can see they put a lot of time and effort into coming up with something that works," said Martin McGee, a Buffalo curator. "I liked it. My general reaction was that it looks pretty good to me."

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery plans to sink its parking lot beneath a restored public green space along Elmwood Avenue, radically reconfigure much of Gordon Bunshaft's low-lying 1962 addition into a grand public entry hall and create 23,000 square feet of new gallery space split between two new buildings that pay deference to the surrounding parkland.

The preliminary plans for the placement and function of the gallery's long-planned expansion project, whose budget has nearly doubled from its original price tag of $80 million, are being announced by gallery officials in a public meeting in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center on Wednesday.

"The idea is to become one with the park," said Albright-Knox director Janne Sirén.

Renderings provided by the gallery and its architectural partner OMA, which was selected last year to design the expansion, show the locations for two substantial pieces of new construction.

The first is a 13,000-square-foot space with 16.5-foot ceilings floating between E.B. Green's 1905 neoclassical building and Bunshaft's glass-walled auditorium. In conceptual renderings, the new gallery space has glass walls on all sides, providing elevated, 360-degree views of Delaware Park and the surrounding neighborhood.

[Gallery: Albright-Knox Art Gallery expansion plans]

The second planned building is a structure containing a grand new staircase and 10,000 square feet of additional gallery space dug into the ground along the Elmwood Avenue side of the 1905 building.

Adjoining the underground gallery will be two levels of underground parking, an expensive prospect that allows the gallery to reconstitute the section of Delaware Park now paved over by its parking lot. The landscaping of that space, along with the rest of the gallery's campus, will be designed by veteran landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.

In a forward-looking move, the two-tiered underground parking garage, according to Sirén, can eventually be reconfigured into about 20,000 square feet of additional gallery space in future decades should the demand for cars wane.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the planned expansion is the creation of a vast, light-filled entry hall where the current courtyard and Bunshaft galleries exist. Renderings show the space as a glass-walled public plaza with an elevated walkway providing access to the existing auditorium on the south side and a new restaurant that will spill onto the east lawn of the gallery in the summer months.

In much the same way as the Cleveland Museum of Art's modern atrium, it will create a juxtaposition of new and old. The southern facade of E.B. Green's 1905 building, now partially obscured by Bunshaft's 1962 addition, will be folded into a luminous interior space.

That space will provide free, unfettered access to pedestrians making their way from Elmwood Avenue to the park and vice versa, serving "free public space, a town green, and a social gathering space for people and events," according to Sirén.

"If you're a Buff State student parking your car on Lincoln Parkway there, you can cut through the welcome hall," he added.

The proposed design also includes a new loading dock tucked along the northern edge of the campus, a new circulation plan inside the building and a 5,000 square-foot education center on the south side of the current Bunshaft building where works by Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella and Clyfford Still now hang.

Sirén, who stressed that the renderings the gallery is sharing represent only what are called "volume placements" and not the shape or material details of the eventual buildings that will be designed, said that the expansion meets the goal of maintaining the gallery's current footprint without taking up any more of the surrounding park.

"One of the things that I've puzzled with long before we had OMA," Sirén said, "is how would one build here without expanding the museum's footprint into parkland, yet allowing space for growth and at the same time building something that would become another pearl in Buffalo's pearl necklace of architects, from Richardson and Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright and Saarinen."

From Quebec City, a possible glimpse at Buffalo's future

The new design, led by OMA's Shohei Shigematsu and his New York-based team of architects and designers, attempts to solve this problem by eliminating the problematic parts of Bunshaft's building, namely its cramped gallery spaces and underutilized courtyard.

Bunshaft's gallery is considered an important piece of contemporary architecture, even if many gallerygoers and employees agree that its somewhat claustrophobic design is not suited to the scale of much contemporary art. Even so, its radical reuse is likely to raise the eyebrows of preservationists.

Importantly, the proposed design preserves Gordon Bunshaft's beloved glass-walled auditorium from 1962 even while radically repurposing its smaller gallery spaces to make way for a new public space. As depicted in the renderings, the new entry hall in some ways mirrors the one OMA and Shigematsu created for the Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec City.

The gallery's Clifton Hall building, which it acquired in the 1980s, remains intact in the new design.

The project, funded in part with an historic $42.5 million contribution from Buffalo-born billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach as well as $20 million in public funds, is expected to break ground in April of 2019, with completion expected by October 2021. Upon its completion, it will be renamed the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, in honor of Gundlach's groundbreaking gift and his desire to rebrand the institution as an emblem of Buffalo's revival.

With a new fundraising target of $155 million, the gallery still needs to raise $30 million to meet its goal. Sirén said he expects that money to come from people with Buffalo connections from outside Western New York, though he did not specify who might provide the money.

Watch the press conference here:

email: [email protected]

On Nov. 1, Albright-Knox Art Gallery officials held their latest public meeting about its high-profile expansion project.

On hand were architect Shohei Shigematsu of the global architecture firm OMA, landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and gallery director Janne Sirén.

Each of them spoke in broad terms about their shared vision for the new institution that will result from their work, which will be renamed the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum upon its completion sometime in the early 2020s.

Here's a pair of videos (with apologies for an interruption midway through because a certain reporter forgot to silence his cell phone) that will give those interested in the expansion process some insight into the personalities and perspectives of the people who will reshape the Albright-Knox and the Museum District:

Part 1:

LIVE on #Periscope: Restarting: https://t.co/ua6rvAa23n

— Colin Dabkowski (@colindabkowski) November 1, 2016

Part 2:

LIVE on #Periscope: Public meeting on Albright-Knox expansion project: https://t.co/7ANBFsGggV

— Colin Dabkowski (@colindabkowski) November 1, 2016

Email Colin Dabkowski at [email protected]

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Buffalonians got their first glimpse at the man who will reshape the Museum District Tuesday night in the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center, where architect Shohei Shigematsu spoke during a public meeting about Albright-Knox Art Gallery's $125 million expansion project.

Albright-Knox leaders chose Shigematsu, who runs the New York City office of the global architecture firm OMA, from a shortlist of five buzzworthy architecture firms in June that competed to design the gallery's first major expansion in more than 60 years.

Albright-Knox Director Janne Sirén said Tuesday night that the project, which recently received a major boost from Buffalo-born billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach and has already exceeded its original fundraising goal of $80 million, is likely to break ground "sometime in the first half of 2019."

"We are very delighted to be part of this continuum of your great history in this city," said Shigematsu in his brief presentation, during which he ticked off OMA's recent or ongoing projects in Miami, Quebec City, Milan, Seattle and Washington.

He then launched into an overview of the challenges his firm will face during the design process, from better integrating the museum into the park and city, merging the architectural styles of three different eras and working with a piece of parkland that has been vastly modified in the 150 years since it was created.

"These kinds of constraints are often a great driver for architecture to come," Shigematsu said, while the phrase "design challenges = new opportunities" appeared on the screen behind him.

Shigematsu, who was accompanied by five other OMA staffers, did not discuss any specifics for his firm's design. The point of the meeting, rather, was to gather public input on the direction of the project.

The gallery and OMA will work together for the next six months to gather more public opinion and to create a concept and a concrete look for the new gallery.

After Sirén and Shigematsu finished their remarks, attendees broke off into small groups targeted at specific interests like the placement of a new building, the need for new social spaces, the gallery's relationship to the park and neighborhood and education programs.

Perhaps the liveliest discussion took place in the southeast corner of the room, where OMA staffer Laura Baird addressed questions about the potential for tunnels or bridges connecting the Burchfield Penney Art Center to the future Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, the replacement or removal of roads connecting the gallery to the Scajaquada Expressway and the future of Clifton Hall, a brick building at the southern edge of the gallery's land.

While Baird did not give any definitive answers, she suggested that much of the process will revolve around tradeoffs between expensive wish list items like underground tunnels and the practical realities of the gallery's construction budget.

She also revealed that during the architecture competition, OMA proposed 14 different design schemes that explored "everything you could imagine."

The general mood at the event was one of cautious optimism about the project, with many if not most suggestions focusing on the need to respect the relationship between the gallery and the park that surrounds it and the potential for restoring some part of the park to its original state.

Frits Abell, a developer and longtime patron of the gallery, said he was encouraged by Shigematsu's presentation.

"I love that he already is on top of the holistic view, the historic nature of the park and the neighborhood," Abell said.

The next public meeting on the project is planned for Nov. 1 in a location to be announced.

email: [email protected]

Assembly leaders on Thursday announced a $5 million state contribution toward Albright-Knox Art Gallery's $125 million expansion project.

The contribution is part of the state's previously announced $15 million commitment to the project, drawn from the state's capital projects budget. The gallery announced the state's pledge for the project in September, but the assembly waited until this week to make its own separate announcement.

"We all recognize that the Albright-Knox is a great asset to our local community, and the community is really proud of the Albright-Knox," assemblyman Sean M. Ryan said by phone ahead of Thursday's news conference in the gallery. "We believe that this singularly will be the biggest tourist draw into the City of Buffalo."

Ryan appeared at the gallery with fellow Western New York Assembly members Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes and Robin Schimminger as well Assembly speaker Carl Heastie, who characterized the expansion project as a way to draw job-seekers to the region.

The Albright-Knox's $125 million expansion project received an unexpected boost earlier this year, when Buffalo-born billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach pledged $42.5 million to the project. That contribution spurred a breathless fundraising campaign that resulted in more than $60 in donations from Albright-Knox board members, foundations and public sources.

Upon its completion sometime in the next five years, the gallery will change its name to the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, or the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

email: [email protected]

Jeffrey Gundlach, the billionaire investment manager whose $42.5 million contribution to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's expansion efforts stunned the city this week, left Buffalo behind at a depressing time in the city's history.

After he departed for Los Angeles in 1983, the image of a city mired in defeat remained fixed in Gundlach's mind for decades, like a snow globe filled with flakes of rust.

"I was in Buffalo in the '70s and they did these crazy things like slogans to try to motivate people," Gundlach said, referring to the "Buffalo Talkin' Proud" tourism campaign. "They built a light-rail line ... to downtown thinking that was going to draw people downtown, heroically missing the fact that no one's going to ride the rail line unless there's something to go to."

But that static image of a city hung up on its own failures began to reveal hairline cracks about a decade ago, when Gundlach began making regular trips to his hometown for family holidays and pilgrimages to the Albright-Knox.

[Related: Pride and optimism on display at Albright-Knox celebrates]

With each visit, Buffalo's civic pride and optimism became clearer to Gundlach. That sense of renewed hope reached a fever pitch during a visit to the city last July to speak to a meeting of the Buffalo chapter of the Chartered Financial Analyst Society in the Albright-Knox auditorium.

During that visit, Gundlach ventured into the Elmwood Village.

"I was there a year ago for a visit, and there was that Garden Walk they have in the downtown area, where people open up their back yards and their beautiful gardens and you get a chance to walk through those neighborhoods and see how these once nearly dilapidated homes now have all kinds of pride," Gundlach said. "This was all going on, and I found out there was this capital campaign. And I thought, this is something that would make a difference."

Inspired by the renewed pride Buffalonians were taking in their city, Gundlach applied the same analytical instinct that fueled his rise as an investment expert to the task of expanding the Albright-Knox. Once he set his mind to the project, it came together with astonishing speed.

[Related: Meet Jeffrey Gundlach, art collector and billionaire bond king]

Being part of a winner

Gundlach first met with Albright-Knox Art Gallery Director Janne Sirén last July during his visit to the gallery for a talk to financial analysts.

Though they did not discuss the prospect of a gift at that point, Sirén immediately began to court Gundlach, even sending flowers to his mother, Carol Gundlach, on her birthday.

According to Sirén, their first conversations about a potential matching gift happened in April of this year. By the end of June, after a lengthy phone conversation with Sirén in which Gundlach stressed the need for the campaign to unfold quickly, the structure of the donation was in place.

That's when Sirén, Albright-Knox Development Director Jillian Jones and Buffalo-born art adviser and art world deal-maker Amy Cappellazzo took Gundlach's lead and embarked on a campaign to meet his target of $30 million in private funds and $20 million from public sources.

In more than 100 meetings and conversations with potential donors, Sirén and Jones invoked either Gundlach's name or the size of his gift, which fueled what Sirén called "the fastest capital campaign in the history of the United States if not the world."

Depending on your perspective, the gallery's campaign could also be viewed as one of the longest in recent United States history given that expansion plans had been floated as long ago as 1999. The long-germinating nature of the expansion made it likely that Albright-Knox board members and other Buffalonians of means had long been prepared to pony up for the gallery when the moment came.

Even so, insiders agreed, the prospect that the gallery could have reached its $80 million target without an outside investment like Gundlach's was unlikely. When that gift arrived, however, the community responded with remarkable enthusiasm.

A crucial turning point, Gundlach said, came during an Aug. 8 meeting of the Albright-Knox board, where Cappellazzo made a strong pitch on his behalf that he said "made a big difference in getting people comfortable, getting people to dig a little deeper and getting them to fall in line" with the plan he had devised.

"I wanted it to be a vehicle [for] leaders in the city, families, board members of the Albright-Knox and everybody else that wants to be part of a winner," he said. "I wanted this to be the centerpiece of the cultural metaphor for the Buffalo renaissance and to do it in a way that it was as likely to succeed as possible."

As for the prospect of the gallery hitting its new fundraising target of $125 million, Gundlach was skeptical that Buffalo's philanthropic community has much more to give.

"I don't think the Albright-Knox could have raised $80 million without somebody like me," he said in a phone interview on Saturday. "I don't know if there's any more doorbells to ring."

A gift for Mom

During an interview from his Los Angeles home before Friday's announcement, Gundlach admitted that Buffalo's comeback and his affinity for modern and contemporary art were not the only factors behind his historic gift.

"I will acknowledge that, a little bit, I’m doing this for my mom," he said of his mother, Carol Gundlach, who still lives in the same modest home in Amherst where Gundlach grew up. "She's always loved the Albright-Knox."

On Friday afternoon, a beaming Carol Gundlach posed for photos with her son in front of one of his favorite paintings in the gallery's collection, Clyfford Still's "1957-D No. 1." She attended nearby Kensington High School and made many visits to the Albright-Knox while studying at SUNY Buffalo State College.

"I’m astonished at this, that this worked so well," she said. "Although, when he puts his mind to something, you can be sure he's going to think it through."

As for the gallery's new name -- the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, or Buffalo AKG Art Museum -- Gundlach said it better reflects the vital connection between the city and its flagship cultural institution.

"I never wanted it to just be some weird, grotesque transactional thing; I wanted it to be for the City of Buffalo, and so my most important goal was to say, let's put Buffalo on the name," he said. "I believe that the Albright-Knox is shorting itself on visitors by not calling itself 'Buffalo.' "

Along with the Buffalo Garden Walk, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, even the now-beleaguered Buffalo Billion, the new Buffalo-branded museum that will emerge from Gundlach's contribution is yet another piece of evidence that the city's comeback is more than merely psychological.

"There were all kinds of false starts in Buffalo," Gundlach said. "And finally, it's real."

email: [email protected]

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Jeffrey Gundlach, the billionaire investor and Amherst native who made a historic $42.5 million pledge to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery this week, began his relationship to the Elmwood Avenue institution as a young boy.

"My first experience was that of being a fairly young Buffalonian, being dragged there by my mother and my grandmother," said Gundlach, who lives in Santa Monica, Calif. and briefly entertained putting together a bid for the Buffalo Bills with Jim Kelly in 2015.

But for Gundlach, it was not love at first sight. Gundlach, whose grandmother Helen Fuchs Gundlach was a noted local painter, avoided modern art as an adult. Instead, he collected landscapes and seascapes by California painters of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

"I had no interest in non-representational art at all," Gundlach said. "I thought it was a joke. I thought it was a scam. You know, you put a pile of rocks in the corner and people call it art."

That all changed during a 2002 trip to the Tate museum in London, where he came face-to-face with a painting by Piet Mondrian that blew his mind.

"It's like I’m hit by a thunderbolt and I go, ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!’ I just totally get this," he said. "All of a sudden, at that moment, all I cared about was more modern art."

Gundlach's art collection grew along with his rise as an investment manager.

Like much about the man who has come to be known America's reigning "bond king," Gundlach's entry into the world of investment banking was unorthodox.

After attending Dartmouth College and Yale University, he moved to Los Angeles in 1983, where he was a drummer for several minor rock bands. According to a Fortune magazine story, he decided to become an investment banker after watching an episode of the television show "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" which listed the profession as the most lucrative.

With almost no knowledge of the bond market, he landed an entry-level job at TCW, where he eventually became one of the most successful bond traders in the United States across a storied, 24-year career. After a dispute with TCW management in 2009, he left his longtime employer and struck out on his own with dozens of his employees. His new firm, DoubleLine Capital, has since amassed more than $90 billion in assets. The details of his messy breakup with TCW played out in a salacious court battle that ended in mixed verdicts and also aired some interesting details relating to Gundlach's affinity for modern art.

According to an article in the trade journal Pensions and Investments, Gundlach used the code words "Artwork" and "Gallery" during sensitive negotiations with another asset management company while he was at TCW. The logo for DoubleLine is based on one of his own Mondrian paintings.

Gundlach's knowledge of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's collection is encyclopedic.

"There are parts, when we talk about the history of the museum, that he knows better than I do," Sirén said.

Asked to name his favorite works from the collection, Gundlach launched into an annotated list of nearly every noteworthy masterpiece the gallery owns. These ranged from a beloved Mondrian – "Always loved Mondrian, every Mondrian, everywhere in the world," he said – to a prized canvas by Franz Kline, so few of whose paintings, he said, "look the way you want them to."

"Certain people just get it," said Buffalo native and art market expert Amy Cappellazzo of Gundlach's eye for talent. "It's very rare you meet someone who has the capacity to collect, but also has the intellectual thirst, the almost insatiable intellectual thirst, to know about the objects and the artist and the movement and the period and the artist's entire production."

So what was it that ultimately prompted Gundlach to contribute such a game-changing sum to the Albright-Knox project?

"I’ve been solicited to give money to many institutions: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, my alma mater Dartmouth College. And, OK, fine, they’re all great institutions," he said. "It's wonderful to support them, but what difference does it make if I give $42.5 million to Dartmouth College or to the Museum of Modern Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York? You’d need a microscope to find it. And quite frankly, they don't really need it."

In other words, Gundlach ran the numbers and saw that his money would go much farther in Buffalo than anywhere else.

"I don't spread things thin," Gundlach said. "I focus deeply. I do that with my work, with my company. I want to make a difference to the things that I apply myself to and not just, as T.S. Elliot said, mete out my life piecemeal. So, I said, this will make a difference."

email: [email protected]

Albright-Knox Art Gallery has raised more than $100 million for its expansion project in less than three months, spurred in large part by a $42.5 million pledge from billionaire bond-trader and Western New York native Jeffrey Gundlach.

The commitment from the Los Angeles-based investment guru, set to be announced Friday, is likely the largest single private donation to a cultural institution in Western New York history.

In honor of the gift, the Albright-Knox board voted this week to change the gallery's name to the Buffalo Albright-Knox-Gundlach Art Museum, or the Buffalo AKG Art Museum for short, upon its completion.

Gundlach's gift was designed to flush out millions in matching donations from Western New York foundations, corporations and individuals as well as state, county and city government. It did just that, encouraging private donors to contribute more than $40 million and government sources expected to commit an estimated $20 million.

Gundlach's pledge has also pressed the fast-forward button on the gallery's expansion project, all but ensuring that construction on a new museum at the edge of Delaware Park will begin before the decade is out.

"This is the cataclysmic New Buffalo story, that Buffalo, the most unlikely of cities, does this and raises beyond our target if everything goes according to plan, in a matter of 11 weeks," said gallery director Janne Sirén, who spent most of his waking hours from late-June to mid-September making urgent pitches to the owners of Buffalo's biggest bank accounts.

Gundlach, an avid art collector who briefly entertained a bid to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2015, characterized his gift as an attempt to ride "the tailwind of civic pride" now sweeping Buffalo after decades of disappointment and decline.

"I said to Janne, this campaign cannot be another missed wide right. It just can't. It can't be that we end up failing at this," Gundlach said from his home in Santa Monica, Calif. "This is Buffalo flexing its muscle and its civic pride, and it did a fantastic job."

The gift was set up to encourage $30 million in private donations from largely local sources, which triggered his own contribution of $30 million. Gundlach also promised to contribute another $12.5 million if the gallery could line up $20 million in government funding from state and local sources.

Of the more than $40 million of private money raised for the project beyond Gundlach's gift, $20.9 million comes from the 32 members of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the board that oversees the gallery. Another $15.1 million comes from local foundations and corporations, with an additional $4.7 million flowing from 59 individual donors Sirén called "friends of the Albright-Knox."

On the government side, Sirén said the gallery is in line for about $20 million in funding from New York State, Erie County and the City of Buffalo. Of New York State's $15 million contribution, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement that the project is "further proof of Western New York's renaissance."

Sirén estimates that he and Albright-Knox Development Director Jillian Jones had more than 120 conversations with potential donors since the capital campaign officially began in June. They started with the 32 members of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, then expanded the circle to foundations and Buffalo's tight-knit philanthropic class. In each meeting, Sirén said, mention of Gundlach's matching gift proposal was "a game-changer."

That was true for Oishei Foundation President Robert Gioia, whose organization is contributing $3 million to the expansion.

Gundlach's gift "has galvanized the Western New York philanthropic community," Gioia said, adding that the gift prompted a kind of chain reaction of generosity from Western New Yorkers and foundations. "When others incentivize us and we can incentivize others, it really improves the opportunity to have an impact in this community."

The gallery's haul from the silent phase of its capital campaign far exceeds the goal of $80 million gallery leaders announced in June. But Sirén said the additional funding will not alter the size or scale of the expansion project "even one millimeter," nor is it a license to spend for the gallery's chosen architecture firm, OMA.

Rather, Sirén said, the additional money will bolster the museum's anemic operating endowment, which currently sits at about $35 million. Sirén said he would like to double it.

"Our operating endowment supports 19.3 percent of our operations, and that's too low," he said. As the project advances, he added, "you expect to see an operating budget that's about a million or two million larger than it is now. That means that in a field of rarified resources, the way to bolster our ability to meet that challenge is by enhancing the operating endowment."

A story of Buffalo pride

Gundlach, 57, is the CEO and chief investment officer of DoubleLine Capital, a Los Angeles-based mutual fund firm he created in 2009.

He was born in East Amherst and attended Amherst High School. According to an AOL News profile, he earned a bachelor's degree in math and philosophy from Dartmouth College and later enrolled in the theoretical mathematics Ph.D. program at Yale University, which he did not complete.

According to Forbes, Gundlach's estimated net worth is $1.66 billion, which puts him 423rd on the outlet's list of billionaires in the United States.

In addition to his personal fortune, Gundlach has also built a valuable art collection. It includes major works by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Willem de Kooning, Donald Judd and Piet Mondrian, whose work was the inspiration for DoubleLine Capital's logo.

Because of its speed and intensity, the capital campaign that tore through Buffalo's philanthropic community during the past 11 weeks resembled a corporate acquisition more than a non-profit appeal.

The structure and execution of Gundlach's gift owes much to the input of another Buffalo ex-pat, Amy Cappellazzo, regarded by many as America's pre-eminent expert on the modern and contemporary art market.

Cappellazzo, who has served as a close adviser to Gundlach for more than a decade, built her career at Christie's auction house, where she developed its post-war and contemporary art department into a dominant global force. She later co-founded a private art consultancy, Art Agency, Partners, that was recently acquired by Sotheby's.

The Albright-Knox deal with Gundlach, she said, was modeled on the more ambitious timelines of corporate campaigns.

"This is how business rolls. Not not-for-profit business," Cappellazzo said in a phone interview from Chicago. "We set it up on a business-like calendar, as if you were raising money for a deal or you were purchasing a company and had a period of due diligence to put all the funds together."

Gundlach's first began talk with Sirén about a potential contribution in April, and a proposal came together by the end of June. After that, Sirén and Jones set about seeking local donations, which flowed more easily when donors learned about the magnitude and historic significance of Gundlach's gift.

What's more, Sirén said, word of Gundlach's pledge set the fears of many well-off Buffalonians and foundation leaders at ease in an atmosphere where many local organizations are conducting or about to launch capital campaigns of their own.

"What we have done effectively is released a tremendous amount of philanthropic pressure on this community," Sirén said. "Our anchor donor and the people and entities that have participated, they have also given a symbolic example to other people who might wish to contribute to Buffalo."

As a Buffalo native with a fondness for her hometown museum that mirror's Gundlach's, Cappellazzo said she is proud of the campaign's success.

"Any moment where Buffalo looks strong and shines is like, hell yes," she said. "We just need the Bills to win, frankly, and we’ll sort of get our mojo back."

On June 22, Shohei Shigematsu of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture spoke to a crowd of assembled artists, journalists and officials in Quebec City about his firm's design for the National Fine Arts Museum of Quebec.

Many of his comments about the building, which like the Albright-Knox Art Gallery sits on a historic campus in a major park, are relevant to his firm's work on Buffalo's best-known cultural asset. They also give a good sense of the architect's droll sense of humor about himself and about the worlds of art and architecture.

Below is an audio recording of his remarks, followed by a transcript.

Thank you all for being here today.

I’m originally from Japan, so I have this straight face and monotone way of speaking. So please don't measure my excitement through the way I talk.

Ever since our first visit – our first visit was quite wild from New York to Quebec City. It was entirely white, in a blizzard and arrived in complete snow. So it was a very dramatic entry into the city.

Since then, of course, we were very inspired by Quebec City in general, and first of all, people's openness. You might think that I say this to every city, but actually I really felt people were quite open here.

We were also inspired by the site obviously, the building's prominent location along Grand Allee and between the city and the park and embedded in a historical context, next to both a prison and church. As you might know, it's a dream for an architect to build a building that is connected to both prison and church.

We were inspired by the richness of the collection, obviously, and at a time when art is diversifying and now including media, performance, education and events and so on, this museum collection holds a very unique and diverse range of work. And also now that art is being globalized, we really appreciate the local specificity of the collection of this museum.

There were also challenges obviously in this project. One of the main challenges of the project was to design a contemporary space within a historic context, adjacent to historical buildings. As an architect, this challenge is often also the greatest opportunity. We must find a way to be respectful and continue the intelligence of those who came before us, but at the same time responding to the current moment and finding our own voice. So it was a great pleasure to be challenged by this context.

We responded to this challenge in a couple of ways. First by the transparency. The iconic gesture of this museum is of course apparent, but the most iconic move we made together with the museum was to make the museum very transparent, because museums tend to be closed and introverted boxes. Instead this building is open and transparent and providing a gateway from the city to the park and a connection from the new pavilion to the existing complex.

Because the context is so rich already, we wanted the building to reflect the richness of the context rather than trying to compete. Depending on the time of the year, the building also reflects the four seasons, both in the views it showcases as well as its transparency and the way it reflects light.

Luckily, this project was conceived in 2009, after the credit crisis, the ending time of iconic architecture. The effect was for buildings to become simpler and stronger in the presence and in statement.

We were actually pleased that this museum represents the shift in the art and museum domain. Through a number of clear and simple moves, we created a series of spaces within the building, which are comfortable – which we heard a lot through this opening week, that people feel comfortable in this space and generous enough to truly showcase the spectacular collection.

Given the nature of the project, the nature of the project as an extension, we have a very diverse range of spaces within the campus, from the Beaux Art building to the prison building and this building. And I think that is very essential character of a museum nowadays, to really respond to a diverse range of artforms nowadays. I hope that as a whole, not just the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion, but the whole museum will respond to the need of an artist and different curators.

In the end, art becomes a catalyst, which we always wanted it to be, between activity of the city and the park. So the art is not just about viewing, but it's a catalyst to connect people to the nature and between new and old.

Those primary moves helped us to create an especially memorable moment. I just described some that you might already notice, but for example, the way the park spills into the museum through the skylights, through he windows and the museum into the park, through the extension of exhibitions to the terraces and outdoor staircases for example.

The required underground connection, which tend to be a daunting experience in a typical museum, but the museum was courageous enough to put one of the most important collection, the Riopelle triptych, which is 40 meters long, to the tunnel so that it became not a tunnel but the gallery space, which was a very important move and the result of a collaboration.

Thirdly, the grand hall serves as an urban plaza for Quebec City, so that entire grand lobby is not just an entry lobby, but it's also an urban plaza or street where a lot of activities could happen.

Just a kind of final note, and it's a little bit self-indulgent, but we won a competition thanks to this museum in Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo. It's another museum extension – it seems like I am doomed to do museum extensions. But, since our commission is very close to the Canadian border, in Buffalo, we can easily escape to Canada depending on the kind of new regime that might come to the United States. We hope you will welcome us back.

Thank you very much for being here, and we hope you will enjoy the building as much as we have enjoyed the process of realizing such an important and world-class museum.

Related stories:

-- From Quebec City, a possible glimpse at Buffalo's future

-- In Quebec City, excitement builds for new architecture

-- Can Albright-Knox raise $80 million?

-- OMA hired to design Albright-Knox's expansion

-- Photos: Examples of OMA's other works around the world

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Now comes the hard part for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery: raising $80 million.

An architect is in place to lead the design of its planned expansion, so now the gallery is turning its attention to getting ideas from the public and looking for money.

No one questions that the latter will be a tall order in a region known for its economic travails, but the experience of at least one peer institution suggests that the goal is not insurmountable.

Staff from the Albright-Knox and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture will spend the summer planning a series of town hall meetings for the public and focus groups for its neighbors in the Elmwood Village. Those meetings will begin in September and continue for at least a year, as the architectural firm of OMA's New York office and project leader Shohei Shigematsu sharpen their ideas for an addition that will double the museum's gallery space and create a more welcoming atmosphere for visitors.

As the gallery plans its public input sessions, the gallery's development staff will put the finishing touches on a capital fundraising campaign that will launch later this year or early next year. That effort will begin with contributions from members of the gallery's board and local philanthropists, before expanding to local and national foundations, private donors outside Western New York and finally local, state and federal government officials.

The launch of the gallery's capital campaign follows the recent completion of a study to determine the feasibility of the $80 million project conducted by the New York City-based consulting firm Katherine L. Witt & Associates. That study concluded with an "enthusiastic recommendation to move forward with the project," according to Albright-Knox Development Director Jillian Jones.

Though the gallery has not set a timeline for the project, it has been divided it into six phases.

The first phase, programming and concept design, will run from September to March 2017.

That will be followed by a six-month schematic design phase, when community input will be turned into specific renderings and drawings.

After that comes design development, a period of indeterminate length when gallery and OMA staffers iron out specifics about materials and costs.

That will be followed by the production of construction documents, bidding for construction firms and finally ground-breaking.

How quickly the process moves depends on the success of the gallery's capital campaign. If it moves swiftly, ground-breaking could come as soon as the spring of 2019. If it moves more slowly, it could be pushed back to the following year or later.

But the prospect of raising $80 million for a Western New York museum project is daunting. Few corporate headquarters remain here. The resources of city foundations are already stretched thin. The ranks of local philanthropists have thinned and their pockets aren't as deep as they once were.

Even so, the community will get behind a project it believes in, said Daniel Hart, executive director of Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. That's what happened when the BPO launched its own successful $32 million capital campaign in 2005. The BPO is now nearing the end of another $30 million campaign, which has so far raised $23 million.

"My experience here in Buffalo is that it's a very generous town and people have really stepped up to the plate in terms of their personal philanthropy when there's important projects on the table," he said.

When the BPO launched its first campaign, Hart said, observers had their doubts.

"We were told by more than one person that they didn't know where the money was going to come from for our campaign and we were probably not going to be successful," he said. "But it was something we had to do for the future of the orchestra. We had to forge ahead and find people who would support the vision for it."

They did.

The last major museum constructed in Buffalo, the Burchfield Penney Art Museum, opened in 2008 after its own $30 million capital campaign. The project might not have happened without a $16.5 million investment from New York State in 2006, which helped bring the campaign within sight of its goal.

But it is still too early in the process to tell whether there will be a major state earmark for the Albright-Knox expansion, or, if so, where that money might come from.

The gallery's fundraising feasibility study was based on interviews with 55 potential funders and others, though it did not set a timeline for the project or instruct the gallery on how to organize it. Among the study's key findings were evidence of wide recognition of the importance of gallery's collection, faith in the gallery's leadership and director Janne Sirén in particular and a belief that the gallery can "play a significant role as an economic impetus in the region."

That belief will be a key component of community outreach.

The gallery and OMA, said Sirén, "will continue the conversations that we’ve already had with our Elmwood Avenue cultural corridor partners." Those include the Olmsted Parks Conservancy, SUNY Buffalo State, the Burchfield Penney, Shakespeare in the Park, the Buffalo History Museum and the Elmwood Village association. Sirén said the city's preservation community would also be invited to participate in the discussion.

At the same time, gallery leaders are trying to ramp up excitement for the project outside of Buffalo:

On Wednesday in Basel, Switzerland, Sirén, Shigematsu and artist Mark Bradford will give a talk on "Building the Museum of the 21st Century."

For Shigematsu, conversations with Buffalo residents and organizations with a stake in the future of the site will be crucial to the process. Especially sensitive is the project's siting, or placement, within a challenging section of Frederick Law Olmsted's Delaware Park.

"The siting is very, very critical for this project," Shigematsu said in a phone interview from California. "In order to come up with different possibilities, we really have to talk to all the stakeholders. Our strategy is always to show very transparently the pros and cons of different ranges of possibilities, from very polite and respective ones to very disruptive but effective ones."

As an example of OMA's commitment to community engagement, Shigematsu pointed to his firm's 2011 project for Cornell University, a 47,000-square-foot addition to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. The building's placement, he said, directly resulted from discussions with faculty, students and staff from across the university as well as those concerned with the preservation of Cornell's historic architecture.

And OMA's work on the Miami Beach Convention Center, he added, was the result of a two-year public input process during which the firm gathered input from city government, community members and others.

"We had a lot of meetings to absorb the comments, and then in the next presentation we summarized the comments and presented why we made X move because of X and Y and Z comments," Shigematsu said. "We always made a relationship between the comments and the design direction that we took."

As the gallery's decadelong expansion process finally takes on a more concrete shape, gallery leaders are not interested in rushing the project.

"It's been such a slow process," Albright-Knox board President Thomas R. Hyde said in late May. "I think we have taken our time and it's been time well spent. So we’re going to take some more rather than just sort of jumping to the quick solution."

For Sirén, OMA and Shigematsu's involvement in the project and the gallery's open and deliberate approach is likely to prove attractive to potential donors.

"I think that it's a unique opportunity in many regards for Western New York, but also for individuals who want to perhaps be part of an extremely historic, transformative project," Sirén said. "This is the project of the 21st century for one of the greatest museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States and the world."

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The Office for Metropolitan Architecture, a buzzworthy firm responsible for designing one of the most controversial buildings of the 21st century, has been chosen to design the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's first major expansion in more than 50 years.

The selection of the firm, specifically OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu and his team of New York City-based architects, was approved Monday night by a vote of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the board that oversees the museum. It marks an important moment for the Albright-Knox, whose leaders have spent the past decade setting the stage for an expansion. And it is the first museum commission in the United States for the firm, whose work spans every continent and cuts across disciplines.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to add a new wing to this complex," Shigematsu said in a phone interview last week, adding that the new design will reflect the desire of Albright-Knox leaders "to make the museum itself more open, more public and more diverse."

But don't expect the monumental scale or stylistic brashness of the serpentine CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, China – a project alternately lauded for its inventiveness and pilloried for its authoritarian posture. The comparatively delicate and more budget-conscious Albright-Knox expansion project, which is expected to cost about $60 million, will unfold on a small but famous plot of public parkland and will attempt to fuse the architectural styles of three centuries.

When the project is complete, the gallery will have about twice its current amount of exhibition space, and at least a quarter of its campus will be dedicated to educational and public functions apart from the museum's main exhibition programs. The estimated total cost will be $80 million, with $20 million to be raised for an operating endowment.

While all of the architecture finalists in the Albright-Knox competition produced models and renderings of potential new buildings, the gallery is not releasing any of those designs. The decision, said Albright-Knox board president Thomas R. Hyde, is out of a concern about publicizing design concepts the gallery "has no intention of building."

"We are not picking a design, we’re picking a partner," Hyde said. "Of the things that all the architects have presented in response to our request for proposals, I hope we can get something that is better than any of them."

Now that the gallery has selected an architect, it will launch a six-month process of community engagement and study with Shigematsu and his team, who will officially start work on the project in September. Following that will be another six-month period of schematic design, out of which a concrete plan and renderings will emerge.

Both Hyde and Albright-Knox Director Janne Sirén said the competition among the five accomplished finalists – OMA, BIG, wHY, Allied Works and Snohetta – was tight, and that the decision came down to minuscule differences.

Sirén described the architectural competition, during which the five firms presented ideas to an audience of about 100 in the Albright-Knox auditorium on May 2 and 3, as "a 100-meter sprint, when the differences are in fractions of a second."

"It was a hard decision because of that," Hyde said. "On the other hand, if you think of a hard decision as one where you destroy the place if you go the wrong way, this was not a hard decision."

What made OMA rise to the top, Hyde and Sirén agreed, was a combination of its reputation for research into the cultural, physical and institutional history of its clients and sensitivity to the complex site on which the Albright-Knox campus sits.

Shigematsu said his team's research included a deep look into Frederick Law Olmsted's design for Delaware Park, the western edge of which is anchored by the Albright-Knox. He noted that Olmsted's design was not merely two-dimensional, but included many vertical walkways and staircases. Those elements, he said, helped to shape OMA's proposed designs for the building.

The team also considered the complex architectural legacy of the site itself, which includes the original 1905 building by E.B. Green, a 1962 addition designed by Gordon Bunshaft, and Green's much-modified Clifton Hall, which is connected to the gallery by an underground corridor.

OMA, which originally stood for the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, was founded by the Dutch architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas in 1975. Its museum projects include the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, the under-construction Fondazione Prada in Milan, Miami's Faena Arts District and a recently completed addition to the Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec City.

Like the other finalists on the gallery's short list, OMA has no singular style. It markets itself as a firm that creates "intelligent forms while inventing new possibilities for content and everyday use." Its projects range from the $1.2 billion CCTV Headquarters in Beijing to scenic designs for one-off fashion shows for Prada and others in Paris and Milan.

OMA's working process is famously non-hierarchical, with key ideas for designs sometimes flowing up the chain from anyone in the office. Its process of pitching a new client, as described in a 2005 profile of Koolhaas in The New Yorker, involves cobbling together foam models meant to show the way the firm's designers think and solve problems rather than merely presenting slick renderings of their proposed designs.

Those foam models caught Hyde's eyes during the competition.

"The foam was something we liked. They were crazy looking things," Hyde said. "Their presentation started with those and I think what they were conveying to us was that we look at all kinds of things. We don't jump to what it's going to look like in the end."

Shigematsu, who cut his teeth in OMA's Rotterdam headquarters before taking charge of the New York office in 2006 and becoming a partner in 2008, has led the Faena Arts District project and the new Pierre Lassonde Pavilion in Quebec City. It is the Quebec project, also meant to double the museum's gallery space bridge disparate architectural styles at the edge of a public park, that bears the most resemblance to the game of architectural Tetris he and his team will have to play in Buffalo.

"Rather than creating an iconic imposition, it forms new links between the park and the city," a description of the project from OMA's website reads. A similar challenge exists at the Albright-Knox, and that fusion of architecture and landscape is part of what attracted OMA and Shigematsu to the project.

"The City of Buffalo has such a level of architectural heritage and legacy, and we were very thrilled potentially to be part of that," Shigematsu said. "Of course, this is an Olmsted city, and who can do a project within an Olmsted-designed park? That's an opportunity that doesn't probably happen anywhere else but in this precise location."

The board's next challenge is fundraising. Sirén and Hyde said they are seeking funding from individual donors, government sources and foundations.

Without a rendering in hand, the process may prove more difficult than a typical fundraising strategy. But the gallery's leadership is counting on the reputation of OMA and the thoroughness of an expansion process that began back in 2001.

"We’re going to try to recruit the lead gifts just based on people's trust in the integrity of the process that we’ve been playing out and trust in the quality of the architect we’ve selected," Hyde said.

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Great institutions only remain great by learning from their mistakes.

And, like most major museums, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery has made a few.

There was the botched rollout of the 2007 sale of about 200 pre-modern artworks from its collection, a process that reinforced the notion of the gallery as an elite silo disconnected from the concerns of the public. There was a misguided 2010 exhibition of corporate photography funded by a Buffalo Sabres owner, which disregarded gallery's central mission. And finally there was the inexplicable, NSA-level secrecy with which the gallery held onto its expensive 2013 master plan, the first details of which only began to dribble out this week.

So it was hardly surprising that when the gallery announced plans to launch a major expansion project last fall, some reacted with healthy skepticism about how the process might unfold.

But judging by the gallery's behavior since its September announcement, it seems that many of the hard-learned lessons from its checkered history with public relations and outreach are finally sinking in.

Exhibit A is the gallery's decision to hold several months of public meetings, focus groups and sessions with public officials and other stakeholders in the area before rolling out its capital campaign and request for architectural proposals. Those meetings drew more than 300 people to venues throughout Erie County, where they were able to sound off about their concerns with the gallery's current operation, its future and its place in the larger community.

It was clear from the first minutes of the first meeting that the gallery had its heart set on a major expansion. Anyone who has paid even cursory attention to the gallery during the past 15 years knows that it's long been on the minds of leaders and board members.

So it stands to reason that the public with such enthusiasm to the choreographed bit of subtle salesmanship with which gallery director Janne Sirén opened each meeting. He started with a history of the institution and an overview of how its collection has grown and moved on to a discussion of the various challenges with flow, exhibition space and more mundane issues like cracked marble floors and the lack of a loading dock. He also took time to downplay the architectural importance of E.B. Green's much-modified Clifton Hall, which is almost sure to come into play later on.

Armed with Sirén's pitch, meeting attendees placed colored dots on a series of pre-written answers to key questions about the gallery's future: "What are the AK's biggest physical challenges?" "What would make you want to visit more often?" "How important is showing more of the collection?"

No one will be shocked to learn that there was an overwhelming consensus for adding more exhibition space and building an expansion on or near the gallery's campus on the edge of Delaware Park.

Of course, if the gallery leaders were really after a scientific accounting of community sentiment about the institution and its future, they could have commissioned a poll of area residents with relative ease and at little expense. But while this was labeled as a public input process, it's clear that it was at least as much about salesmanship and savvy public relations. And it has done its work so far marvelously well.

The gallery's task when it comes to public input, after all, is inordinately complex.

On one hand, expansion projects, especially those of publicly funded institutions like the Albright-Knox, must involve the public in a way that goes beyond cosmetics. On the other, the institution must retain a healthy amount of autonomy throughout the process, lest we arrive at a mediocre final product whose chief virtue is its inoffensiveness. A pedestrian building of the sort that is currently popping up throughout the city could be just as bad or worse than the work of an egotistical starchitect with carte blanche.

Sirén and gallery staffers have clearly been doing their homework, visiting smart expansion projects at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., studying the complex fusion of architectural styles at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Mass. and taking in new builds such as the Aspen Art Museum and the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.

While the public input process is unlikely to result in any stunning changes in strategy for the gallery, it's been conducted so far in a relatively open and thoughtful way that is at least a light-year or two ahead of the gallery's past practices. This is heartening and it bodes well for an institution that, mistakes and all, seems intent on living up to its legacy.

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Last fall, Albright-Knox Art Gallery officials launched a series of meetings and focus groups to gauge public opinion on the gallery's challenges and its future growth. On Monday night, director Janne Sirén shared the results of those meetings with a large crowd in the gallery's auditorium.

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At the public input meetings, held throughout Erie County over the past several months, attendees gave feedback to questions by sticking colored dots to one of several pre-written answers on a series of poster boards.

The results from that exercise are in, and they show -- perhaps not surprisingly -- that the more than 300 attendees at the public meeting overwhelmingly favor an Albright-Knox expansion on its current campus.

Below is a breakdown of the data the Albright-Knox collected during its meetings, with an opportunity for you to cast your vote to see how it matches up with those who participated in the first step of the gallery's public outreach process. It's worth keeping in mind that this process was far from scientific and was preceded in every case by a presentation from Sirén that strongly suggested the need for an expansion to house the gallery's rapidly growing collection.

In assessing the gallery's current problems, nearly half of respondents cited a lack of exhibition space, with layout, access and educational facilities ranking as secondary concerns:

[poll id="48"]

One of the most common complaints at any museum is that patrons' favorite artworks are not on view when they visit, and that rings true in Buffalo as well:

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Reaction was more divided when meeting attendees were asked what amenities or functions would make them come to the gallery more often, with the largest number (17 percent) expressing a desire for more evening hours. The gallery is currently opened from Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the exception of special events and M&T First Fridays, when it is open until 10 p.m.

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When it came to the yes or no questions, there were few surprises:

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The American art world has been engaged in a museum-building boom for the past two decades. From massive expansion projects in Boston, Denver, San Francisco and Cleveland to smaller regional or single-artist museums in Aspen, Colo. and St. Petersburg, Fla., few are the American cities that have not dropped significant amounts of cash on new, eye-grabbing museum buildings aimed at drawing tourists and giving growing collections more room to breathe.

And now that Albright-Knox Art Gallery has announced its own ambitions to build a major expansion, the institution has an opportunity to learn from the mistakes and successes of dozens of expansion projects that have come before.

In their research, Albright-Knox officials looked at more than two dozen museum expansion projects from across the United States, ranging in cost from $11 million to $555 million. They also researched how much those expansions cost per square foot, and came up with a range of $275 per square foot for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts expansion by London-based architect Rick Mater to Renzo Piano's new pavilion for the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, at $1,366 per square foot.

Here's a look at some of the museum projects the gallery has looked into to help determine the size and scope of its own expansion (click the image for a larger view):

Joe Martin Lin-Hill, the gallery's deputy director, said in a recent interview that he and others had set out to determine if hiring a so-called "starchitect" on the order of Renzo Piano or Zaha Hadid was "necessarily more expensive" than going with a lesser-known name. Judging only by the examples the gallery provided, the answer seems to depend entirely on the specifics of each individual project.

For example, according to the gallery's calculations, the Chicago Art Institute's $410 million, Renzo Piano-designed renovation and expansion cost $410 per square foot, while the same architect's new Kimbell Art Museum cost $1,366 per square foot.

The average cost per square foot of the examples the gallery provided is $638. Lin-Hill suggested in a recent interview that the gallery was looking to add less than 100,000 square feet of space. So, if the gallery wanted to add 50,000 square feet to what it considers its current "prime exhibition space" of about 19,000 square feet at the middle-of-the-road cost of $638 per foot, the gallery's expansion would cost in the neighborhood of $30 million, plus the likely substantial cost of significantly renovating its current buildings.

On the higher end, supposing the gallery went for a 50,000 square foot expansion and renovation by a starchitect on the order of Zaha Hadid, whose new Eli and Edythe Broad Museum in East Lansing, Mich. cost $978 per square foot, the cost would be closer to $50 million plus renovation costs.

Here's another graphic provided by the gallery that shows the ratio of renovated space to new space from 26 recent expansion, renovation and new museum projects:

In describing the other projects the Albright-Knox has explored in its research, Lin-Hill stressed that no museum project is precisely comparable to the expansion process now playing out at the gallery.

"It's not like we’re looking at this and saying, ah, here's the answer, comparables," Lin-Hill said. "Nothing is entirely comparable, just like this collection is not entirely comparable to anything."

The gallery's official input process begins on Oct. 27, when it will host the first of four meetings seeking feedback from members. Public meetings will take place throughout the region beginning in early November.

Last week, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery took an important step toward what is likely to be its first major expansion in 52 years, making a forceful case before gallery members that its existing exhibition space is woefully inadequate for its growing collection.

Now that the gallery has all but declared its intention to expand and to host a series of meetings with its members and the public to seek input about how it will grow, here are some important things to keep in mind:

• The gallery already has a "master plan for growth" in place, though gallery leadership recently downplayed its importance in the current process. It was produced in 2013 by Snohetta, the international architecture firm responsible for the Oslo Opera House, the recent redesign of Times Square, 9/11 Memorial Museum Pavilion and the ongoing expansion of San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. Gallery leadership has remained silent about the details of that plan, which they say addresses issues like visitor flow and accessibility to existing spaces but makes few concrete suggestions.

• The gallery's expansion will come after the museum expansion and renovation craze that has occupied the American art world for the past decade has begun to die down. This will give Albright-Knox and the architect it eventually chooses the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other museums that either bit off more than they could chew or did not go far enough.

• The museum has not yet released details about how much an expansion might cost, but its cost could range from the high tens of hundreds of millions. According to a person close to the gallery, Albright-Knox leadership has told board members that most of that money will come from private sources.

Here's a look at some important moments in recent Albright-Knox history leading up to Wednesday's announcement:

2001: Albright-Knox releases a strategic plan that first hints at plans for an eventual expansion.

2002: Douglas G. Schultz, director of Albright-Knox since 1983, retires and is replaced by Louis H. Grachos.

2004-2005: The gallery board goes on the first of several retreats to brainstorm initial ideas for an expansion project.

2007: Albright-Knox announces and executes a controversial plan to sell some 200 pieces of art at Sotheby's auction house in New York City, which bolsters its fund for acquiring new art work by nearly $70 million.

2008: The gallery first announces its intention to expand, forming the board's first official architecture committee. Charles W. Banta, then president of the gallery's board, said, "After 45 years, the gallery is in dire need of additional exhibition space to display its growing permanent collection. It will be a long process to design a building and raise the money to do so, allowing time for input from the national and international art world, government authorities, the community and the neighborhood." In the same year, architect Richard Gluckman submitted proposals for a 42,000-square-foot addition to its existing campus and the conversion of the D.L.&W. Terminal near Buffalo's waterfront.

2010: The gallery's board forms its campus development committee, which is charged with developing an expansion plan.

2012: The gallery announces the selection of the international architecture firm Snohetta to produce a "master plan for growth," shortly after which director Louis Grachos leaves the gallery for a new position in Austin, Texas.

2013: The Finnish-born museum director Janne Sirén becomes the 11th director of Albright-Knox, arriving with an essential mandate from his predecessor to shepherd a major expansion project into existence.

2014: The gallery officially launches the expansion process at its annual members meeting.

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It's official: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is gearing up for a major expansion.

During the gallery's annual members’ meeting Wednesday night, the 152-year-old institution announced plans to hold a series of meetings with its members and the public to help determine the size and scope of its eventual growth.

According to a gallery member who was present at the meeting, Thomas R. Hyde, president of the Buffalo Academy of Fine Arts, which oversees the Albright-Knox, outlined the gallery's need for more space to exhibit its growing collection. The announcement comes after nearly a decade of planning and speculation about a potential addition and amid increasing concerns about the gallery's ability to effectively exhibit its extensive trove of modern and contemporary art.

"Campus development is no longer an option; it is a necessity," Hyde said during his address to about 100 gallery members on hand for the meeting. "We are, in many ways, a middleweight museum with a heavyweight collection."

Hyde said the gallery will host a series of meetings for members, followed by sessions for public input and finally an official call for design proposals, which is expected to draw entries from various international architecture firms.

The Albright-Knox collection contains about 6,740 works of which, Hyde said, it can only exhibit about 200 at a time, or about 3 percent of what it owns. As the scale of work increases, he said, some important contemporary artworks can't even fit through the building's doors. Both he and gallery director Janne Sirén also mentioned the urgent need to repair the cracked marble floors in the gallery's original 1905 building.

But the gallery's long-germinating plans to expand will go far beyond patching up the floors. With only about 19,000 square feet of exhibition space (excluding Clifton Hall and the gallery's ad hoc Link Gallery), the museum lags far behind other American museums with less significant collections.

The size and scope of the expansion project has not yet been determined or shared, but a person close to the Albright-Knox called the gallery's plans "fairly aggressive" and "fairly expensive," adding that gallery leadership suggested during recent board meetings that most of the money for an expansion would come from private sources.

According to the same person, the gallery's board entertained a contingent earlier this year from the Harvard Art Museums, which will open a $350 million, Renzo Piano-designed expansion and renovation Nov. 16. But Albright-Knox leadership has been tight-lipped even to board members about its plans, which, according to the same source, also involve a major upgrade to its storage facilities in order to house its rapidly growing collection.

The gallery, long dogged by concerns about a lack of space to house its growing collection, has been considering an expansion plan for at least the past decade. Momentum toward an expansion picked up in 2007, after the gallery's controversial sale of about 200 objects from its collection bolstered its fund for acquiring new artwork by more than $70 million (it now stands at $137 million) and the pace of its collecting quickly accelerated.

Under strict rules, the money the gallery earned from its 2007 sale can only be used to purchase new art and cannot fund new construction, salaries or other activities.

In late 2012, under then-director Louis Grachos, the Albright-Knox commissioned the international architecture firm Snohetta to produce a "master plan for growth," which the firm completed early the next year. But the gallery has kept the details of that plan tightly under wraps, saying that releasing the information could jeopardize a future architecture competition.

Such a competition, in which international architecture firms will submit ideas after the gallery sends out an official call for proposals, could come as soon as early 2015.

The gallery last expanded in 1962, when a sleek addition designed by Gordon Bunshaft and named after gallery benefactor Seymour H. Knox opened its doors. Since then, the gallery has significantly transformed its outdoor campus with a series of new sculptures by the likes of Nancy Rubins and Andy Goldsworthy, but its interior spaces have remained largely unchanged even as the art world and the gallery's collection have grown considerably.

"We are committed to making haste slowly," Sirén said, later referencing the gallery's ambition to play a leading role in Buffalo's resurgence and its national identity alongside the city's professional sports teams. "Winning in the future is not going to be only about winning games."

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Seymour H. Knox Jr. converged with the late John J. Albright 50 years ago today, hurtling the art museum bearing both of their names into a new era.

Buffalo native Gordon Bunshaft's glass-and-marble modernist addition to E.B. Green's 1905 Greek Revival structure was dedicated Jan. 19, 1962, which also led to the name changing from the Albright Art Gallery to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Knox, the museum's longtime president, benefactor and visionary art buyer, along with gallery director Gordon M. Smith and the Knox Foundation, paid $1.4 million of the $1.7 million cost of the addition. The expansion heralded a huge step forward for a Buffalo museum recognized as holding one of the great collections of modern and contemporary art in the world.

"That '62 extension put the Albright-Knox on the map of being a truly contemporary institution," said Douglas Dreishpoon, the gallery's chief curator and editor of "The Long Curve: 150 Years of Visionary Collecting at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery."

Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller came to the museum that day in 1962, praising the expansion and Knox's contributions to the arts in New York State in a program in the new 350-seat auditorium.

In attendance were nationally and internationally renowned critics, collectors, architects, scholars and museum officials. The occasion also marked the 100th anniversary to the day that the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, the museum's governing body, was founded.

"It is a perfect building for a museum," internationally renowned Tokyo architect Kenzo Tange said at the time, adding that it was "the most beautiful building in the world for an art museum."

The return to his hometown marked a triumph for Bunshaft.

Born in Buffalo in 1909 to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Bunshaft grew up on Cedar Street on the East Side, attended School 45 and graduated from Lafayette High School before going on to study architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bunshaft spent 42 years with New York City-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, most of that time as chief design partner.

He became a leading designer of skyscrapers in post-World War II New York, subscribing to the International Style popular at that time. It was characterized by rectilinear forms and the use of glass and steel.

Bunshaft designed the 24-story Lever House on New York City's Park Avenue in 1953, one of the first glass-curtained skyscrapers.

Following the Albright-Knox addition, Bunshaft went on to design the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, and the Haj Terminal in Saudi Arabia. In 1988, he was co-winner of the Pritzker Prize, the top honor in the field of architecture.

The museum expansion in Buffalo was a notable departure in scale for the architect.

Bunshaft set to build a contemporary wing for a building of classic design, aiming for an expansion that showed restraint and deferred to the older building. His answer was a black glass box and Vermont marble that made the addition appear smaller than it was.

Among the improvements it made possible were an expanded gallery space, an auditorium with large windows and movable partitions, and an outdoor sculpture garden between the buildings.

"What Bunshaft was doing was creating a paradigm for space that would hold contemporary art. He did what any forward-thinking architect would have done at that time," Dreishpoon said.

"They are modernist spaces, they are full of light, they are intimate, and they are very art-friendly. Bunshaft understood that, and what it was to create museum spaces and spaces germane to experiencing art, and installing art, in a way that was respectful of the art."

The auditorium opened up programming possibilities in a unique environment, Dreishpoon said.

"It's a floating space and is an absolutely remarkable space, surrounded by windows open to nature so that when you're there, you feel like you're connected to the outside," Dreishpoon said. "It's a very unique experience."

Renovation of the older gallery building also was undertaken at that time, with the exterior and inside marble sculpture court sandblasted for the first time since opening in 1905.

Bunshaft earned the American Institute of Architects' top yearly award for the Albright-Knox addition.

"Seymour Knox treated me like I was Michelangelo, and I worked harder on that building than I have ever worked before in my life," Bunshaft told The Buffalo Evening News at the time of the opening.

For Knox, the choice of Bunshaft and a modernist complement to Green's classic building came with risk.

"The appointment of Gordon Bunshaft as the designer of the Albright-Knox Art gallery was inspired, yet also surprising and brave," said Brian Carter, a professor in the University at Buffalo's department of architecture and planning.

Dreishpoon said Knox was well aware the stakes for getting it right were high.

"Seymour had the courage to put money toward an extension and to hire Bunshaft," Dreishpoon said. "He was always forward-thinking, so this was just an extension of that. He was also putting his name on the building, so he had to believe in it."

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Yellow police tape blocked access to the property and a section of the parkway late Monday afternoon and several Buffalo police patrol cars were on the scene.