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The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is the only museum dedicated to the art and design excellence of Western New York.
Mission Statement for the Burchfield-Penney Art Center
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is a regional arts museum that is a part of a leading public urban college. The Center serves as a significant cultural resource for the State University of New York College at Buffalo, the total Western New York community, and the nation. The Center collects, conserves, exhibits, and interprets the achievements of distinguished artists who live or have lived in Western New York, most notably Charles E. Burchfield to whom the Center is dedicated.
A Brief History of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is the Museum for Western New York Arts. It is a center of excellence at Buffalo State College, the largest four year college in the State University of New York system. The Center is a significant cultural resource for the college, the entire Western New York and Southern Ontario region, and the nation. The Center has the world's largest collection of works by the innovative watercolor artist Charles E. Burchfield (681 works of art) and serves as the national study center for the artist. The museum also holds more than 6,000 works by Western New York artists, spanning 1875 to the present. Consistent with its mission as both a dedicated and regional museum, the Center has, during its 34 year history, broadened the range of its commitments and activities, while intensifying its focus on the work of Charles Burchfield.
Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) inspired the creation of the museum at Buffalo State College in 1966. It was originally called the Charles Burchfield Center. The artist had moved to Buffalo from Salem, Ohio, in 1921 to work for the M.H. Birge & Sons Company, a notably artistic and prominent wallpaper manufacturer. In 1929, encouraged by his New York dealer, the Frank K.M. Rehn Galleries, he resigned his position as a designer to devote all his attention to painting. Burchfield’s national success made him an important presence in the Western New York art community, and from 1962 until his death in 1967, he served as a consulting artist at Buffalo State College. When the community and college expressed a need for a regional art center, the opportunity was taken to honor Burchfield's artistic contributions and to reflect his interest in music, literature, and education. The Center was formally created through the Buffalo State College Foundation, Inc. Its first director was Dr. Edna M. Lindemann. Burchfield pledged to help the Center develop its collections and programs, and began with the donation of several works. Sadly, he died only one month after the museum’s opening.
Because Burchfield had a strong interest in all the arts, the Center serves its audiences as a multifaceted cultural and educational institution. In addition to its visual arts offerings, the Center regularly presents concerts, literary readings, and performances as well as lectures, symposia, workshops, and special events. This diversified programming provides artists, students, scholars, collectors, and the general public with opportunities to learn and to exchange ideas about how the art of Western New York reflects American aesthetics and culture. In 1983 the museum was renamed the Burchfield Art Center to focus attention on its function as a multi-arts presenter. The Center's governing body, the Council, formally accepted an expanded mission in 1988, committing to a full range of visual expression, including craft art, architecture, and design, as well as fine art.
Led by its second director, Anthony Bannon, who served from September 1985 through March 1996, the Center began a decade of significant growth and achievement. Expansions of exhibition space, archives and collection storage, and administrative offices were accompanied by increased community support (for example, the total fund balance increased from $181,000 in 1986 to more than $1.3 million in fiscal year 1994-95, and annual attendance more than doubled during that time). The Charles Cary Rumsey Endowment was created in 1985 to support a curator’s salary and the sculpture gallery. The Center gained accreditation from the American Association of Museums in 1994, after completing a series of challenging strategic plans and undertaking an arduous preparatory process. The Center is one of only six college art museums in New York, and is the first college museum in the SUNY system, to achieve this honor.
Between 1991 and 1994 the Center received a series of gifts from collector Charles Rand Penney of more than 1,300 works by Western New York artists, notably including the largest private collection of works by Burchfield, publications and hand-crafted domestic objects by artisans from the Roycroft community, and historic and contemporary works of craft and fine art. These collections, which have been used in numerous exhibitions, educational programs, and publications, have provided the Center with invaluable national exposure. On April 9, 1994, the museum was renamed the Burchfield-Penney Art Center to honor the significance of these gifts and their contribution to the museum's mission.
In 1995 the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Program in Special Needs Art Education was created. This unique collaborative program with Buffalo State College’s art education department allows the Center to serve as a laboratory for training graduate students in museum education for special needs audiences, was created. The Center has become a national model for making art accessible to audiences with all levels of ability.
The Center’s resources, contributions, and planning continue to be reflected in scholarship, exhibitions, and publications. For example, the exhibition Life Cycles: The Charles E. Burchfield Collection, organized by the Center, has just returned from a national tour. Important collaborations, including that resulting in the Elmwood Museum District, and physical renovations, like that creating the Sylvia L. Rosen Gallery for Fine Art in Craft Media, inaugurated in 199, reveal the Center’s growth.
Under the leadership of its third director, Ted Pietrzak, the museum is poised to begin a new phase of service to a national and international audience as its volunteer leadership and staff work with the College and community on a capital campaign for a new building.
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center houses the world's largest collection of the works of Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967), one of America's most prolific and renowned watercolorists.
In addition, the Museum collection includes more than 6,000 works by other important artists who live or have lived in the eight counties that comprise Western New York.
Major Collections:
In addition to the world's largest collection of Burchfield's artwork, the Museum features works in all media of other important and emerging Western New York artists, including sculpture by Beaux-Arts artist Charles Cary Rumsey (1879-1922), turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts works from the Roycroft Collection, and an extensive collection of Craft Art from the collection of Charles Rand Penney. The Center also houses several of the rooms from the Metcalfe House, designed by the internationally-renowned architecture firm of McKim, Mead & White in 1882. In addition to the permanent collections, the Center continually has exhibits in various media on view at any time.
The Center houses the world's largest collection of internationally-known watercolorist Charles Burchfield. We also have an extensive collection of artwork in all media by various contemporary and historically signficant artists from (or who have lived in) Western New York. We also have an extensive collection of works by the Roycrofters, as well as preserved rooms from the Metcalfe House, designed by the New York firm McKim, Mead and White in 1882.
The Center houses the world's largest collection of internationally-known watercolorist Charles Burchfield. We also have an extensive collection of artwork in all media by various contemporary and historically signficant artists from (or who have lived in) Western New York. We also have an extensive collection of works by the Roycrofters, as well as preserved rooms from the Metcalfe House, designed by the New York firm McKim, Mead and White in 1882.
NJP 2K: Two Thousand Images from Ten Years of W.N.Y. Social Documentation
Central Gallery
Photographer Nancy J. Parisi seems to be everywhere as she documents arts events for the weekly column "Whathashappened" for Artvoice. Appropriately conceived for the new year, this exhibition of 2000 black and white prints of documentary photography will feature luminaries and events that have taken place over the past ten years. Photographs of artists, musicians, performers, politicians, arts administrators, patrons, and seemingly half the population of Western New York will be posted from floor to ceiling in Parisi’s installation.
Against the Grain: Photographs by Mark Maio
Mark Maio began Against the Grain in 1989 as a documentary of the Old First Ward in Buffalo, a neighborhood that has remained predominately Irish since the early 1800s. Irish immigrants, who dug the Erie Canal by hand across New York State, settled at its terminus in the "Ward" on the Buffalo River once the canal was completed. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the majority of grain grown in the Midwest was shipped to Buffalo where it was either milled into flour or transshipped to the East Coast by train for shipment overseas after being stored in the massive grain elevators along the Buffalo River. Maio subsequently photographed the neighborhood to include the Irish dock workers from the "Ward" who have unloaded grain from Great Lakes ships to grain elevators. Buffalo is the last port in the U.S. where this type of work is still being done manually. Today, only 80 scoopers remain to unload grain from ships. Maio has traced the journey from grain harvest to flour mills in Buffalo in beautiful these photographs.
The Center is open from
The Center is closed Mondays.
Admissions: Most exhibitions and events at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center are free and open to the pubic (although donations are gratefully accepted).
Directions: From the NYS Thruway, take exit 51W (Route 33W) to Route 198 West, to the Elmwood Avenue South exit. The Burchfield-Penney Art Center is on the right (just off the Thruway) at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Rockwell Road on the Buffalo State College Campus, 1300 Elmwood Avenue. It is the red-brick Federal-style building, directly across the street from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in the Elmwood Museum District, Buffalo, New York.
Ted Pietrzak, Director
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