Word: albright
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...eruption of abstract art as one of the U.S.'s most dynamic periods? Museums all over the country are now hedging their bets by cautiously buying contemporary abstractions. One museum that has decided to buy as if there were no doubt is Buffalo's 52-year-old Albright Art Gallery...
...procession of top museum men put the Albright on its modern course. In 1939 Director Gordon Washburn, now head of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute, inaugurated a "Room of Contemporary Art," where moderns were hung experimentally, then either acquired permanently or resold. This system, widely copied by other museums, was carried on by Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, now head of Yale University Art Gallery, and current Albright Director Gordon M. Smith, 51, who switched the emphasis to U.S. abstract expressionists. The result of the Albright's venturesome buying is a modern collection that ranks in quality right behind such mammoth...
Pick of the Quick. Angel of the Albright is a peppery Buffalo booster, Woolworth Heir and Banker Seymour H. Knox, who, back in the 1930s, captained his home-town East Aurora polo team in international matches. Putting up $100,000 in 1939 to launch the Contemporary Room, "Shorty" Knox, who had previously boasted little more than one lone Utrillo, was soon head over heels in love with modern art. In the last eleven years, Yaleman ('20) Knox has donated 75 paintings and sculptures, of which more than half are products of the current decade...
...myself. There are old pine trees in the picture (center). The blue and brown areas (upper left) are like a rainbow, a cloud, rain or fog-any symbol you pick-but with a feeling of sky, air and space." ¶ Red and Black, by Clyfford Still. This is the Albright's prime acquisition to date, because merely to own a Still is a rarity. Painter Still is so cantankerous that he flatly refuses to sell his work to any collector or museum not of his own choosing, and then is likely to offer only one painting at a take...
...Still's works, Albright Director Smith made a direct approach, found Still in his third-floor walk-up Manhattan studio. With 40 canvases on hand, Still placed only four against the wall. Topmost was the 9-ft.-5½-in. by 13-ft. Red and Black, in Still-like hot red. velvety black and stalactites of white. Director Smith bought it on the spot (estimated price: $5,000 to $7,000). Still says he picked it for the Albright because "it speaks with vigor." As to what it speaks, whether of the West's towering spaces and lost...