The University at Buffalo is home to two art galleries that play an important role in the university's commitment to academic excellence and service to the community. The UB Art Galleries provide easy access to thought-provoking art for students and the broader community, and offer internships and curatorial opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. The galleries also support faculty and student research, and present a year-round series of exhibitions. In addition, the UB Art Galleries provide professional training for graduate and undergraduate students through internships and curatorial opportunities. The galleries play an important role in the University at Buffalo's mission of academic excellence and service to the community.
UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, welcomes the entire university community to experience our cutting edge contemporary art exhibitions, to utilize our resources, and to interact with visiting artists, whether they are dance majors working with a resident artist on an original choreography, writers with paper writing service thanks to which every student can easily cope with writing any type of essay. An Artist Residency program invites artists to create installations that transform the First Floor and Lightwell Galleries while the exhibition is open to the public, providing audiences, and especially students, a unique opportunity to engage and learn from working artists and witness the transformation of the space over time. Faculty are invited to schedule class tours led by the education curator, exhibition curators, artists, faculty, or special guests.
UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, partners with departments and schools to organize exhibitions, conferences, lectures, and performances, including the fall Visual Studies Speaker Series. The lectures were especially popular with students under the title "write my research paper." They were led by professional writers who talked about new essay-writing techniques. Past events and conferences have included an archeological dig of a Charles Clough contemporary art relic organized with the Theoretical Archeological Group's annual conference, an exploration of art and activism organized by UB's Gender Institute, and an international conference exploring the roles and representations of walls in the reshaping of Chinese Modernity.
A seismic shift has occurred recently in university curricula, with emphasis placed less on the mastery of a single area of concentration and more on the integration of specialized knowledge and history, along with theory, to effectively address prevalent aesthetic and societal concerns. Recognizing the vast intellectual capital driving a large research university, UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, encourages faculty and students across disciplines to showcase original thought through exhibitions, projects, and events. Recent faculty-curated exhibitions interpreted, through a philosophical lens, the work of Carlos Estévez and surveyed the changing forms of visual poetry. Every spring semester, the Second Floor Gallery at UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, serves as a laboratory for faculty and students across disciplines to showcase research, and is also the site for an annual first-year MFA exhibition and Noncommittal: A Prospective Glance, a curated exhibition of three to five recent Bachelor of Fine Arts graduates from the Department of Visual Studies.
UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, offers semester-long and academic year internships for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students which provide opportunities to gain invaluable work experience in a variety of departments, including Curatorial, Education, and Registrar.
We are located in the Center for the Arts on the North (Amherst) campus. Founded in 1994, the Center was designed by Gwathmey and Siegel Associates Architects, and features 5,000 square feet of exhibition space in its First Floor, Second Floor and Lightwell Galleries.
The UB Art Gallery’s core exhibition program provides a dynamic forum for contemporary artists, as well as faculty and students across disciplines, to showcase research and artwork through exhibitions, projects and events.
In collaboration with the Department of Art, a Graduate Assistant, who is trained and supervised by professional gallery staff, manages the Second Floor Gallery. The GA curates four exhibitions each year; three annual exhibitions highlighting artwork by undergraduate and graduate students as well as recent graduates from the Department of Art. The fourth exhibition empowers the Graduate Assistant to plan, curate and organize an exhibition for the Second Floor Gallery.
The UB Art Gallery is a non-collecting institution that has a pedagogical mission to present and interpret temporary exhibitions that examine cultural and socio-political topics informing current art practices. The Gallery also initiates programs and conferences that bring together scholars from various disciplines to discuss issues that effect cultural and social policy. The UB Art Gallery supports the creation and presentation of artworks by emerging and mid-career artists, emphasizing interpretation of this work through scholarly publications.
The UB Art Gallery will be a premier venue for the exhibition of contemporary art that navigates the space between object and idea, promoting aesthetic engagement and social justice. We will be known for our collaborative approach to scholarship, interpretive exhibitions, and public programs.
We are committed to social justice and equity. We value artistic freedom, intellectual risk-taking, collegiality, creativity, and collaboration. We embrace difference and celebrate diversity. We are stewards of the University’s resources.