The Gusto Blog

Today, at long last, the City of Buffalo annouced a series of grants from its newly established $200,000 cultural and anti-violence fund that it had been slow to release. Here is the list:

The full press release from the city is here.

--Colin Dabkowski

Tod A. Kniazuk, executive director of the Arts Services Initiative of Western New York, in his office in December, 2011. Photo by Robert Kirkham / Buffalo News.

In 2012, the the Arts Services Initiative of Western New York, under the direction of Tod A. Kniazuk, has been working on a number of projects aimed at improving the health of the region's cultural vitality. It's tough work, but according to the organization's 2012 annual report, released this week, ASI (still in desperate need of a better name) has been making progress. Check the report out here.

--Colin Dabkowski

Cannon Design's new McKinley High School on Elmwood Avenue opened this week. Here's a video Cannon put together exploring the new space:

--Colin Dabkowski

Earlier this evening, members of Buffalo's cultural community dominated an hour-long public hearing of Buffalo Common Council. The cultural funding advocates, responding to a city budget that includes no funding for the arts, echoed and in many cases built upon the eloquent arguments of last year's Erie County cultural funding crisis.

Together, they made a strong collective case for the restoration of a small and stable level of funding to benefit the myriad cultural organizations within its limits. Buffalo cut the majority of arts funding out of its budget during the economic downturn that followed the Sept. 11 attacks and has not restored it since --though, after much haggling, it did provide emergency funding to arts groups during last year's county funding crisis.

Some highlights from the evening's remarks follow. (Please excuse the shaky camera work and note that most speakers or their organizations are members of the Greater Buffalo Cultural Alliance.)

Tod Kniazuk, executive director of the Arts Services Initiative:

Fortunato Pezzimenti, producing director of the Irish Classical Theatre Company:

Meg Quinn, artistic director of Theatre of Youth

Laurie Dean Torrell, executive director of Just Buffalo Literary Center:

Randall Kramer, executive and artistic director of MusicalFare Theatre:

Edmund Cardoni, executive driector of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center:

Jamie Moses, publisher of Artvoice:

Molly Quckenbush, executive director of the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site:

James Lanker, president of the Give for Greatness board and University at Buffalo professor:

--Colin Dabkowski

Today, while browsing through The News' archives for a story about Shea's Performing Arts Center, I ran across an end-of-the-year reflection from early 1999 by former News critic Richard Huntington about how Buffalo's cultural and architectural scene might look a decade or so later. Huntington's rumination is, if not exactly prophetic, at least prescient:

By 2010, with Buffalo happily basking in economic and artistic riches thanks to a gloriously renewed city, we might look back on 1998 as the year that Buffalo, at long last, recognized the true worth of its architectural treasures.

Giddy tourists, lost in the sterling beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House, will think back to 1998 when the Martin House Restoration Corp. wisely made John C. Courtin its executive director, a step that launched the final push that would complete restoration of this great prairie-style house and ensure that Buffalo would be a global architectural draw into the next century.

The many city dwellers of 2010 will walk Main Street admiring the Byzantine splendor of the restored gold dome on the former Buffalo Savings Bank, and remember that in 1998 M&T Bank had the remarkable foresight to spend $500,000 to regild this E.B. Green gem.

Farther afield, visitors to the Wright-designed summer house named Graycliff will be mindful that in 1998 the beautifully sited property in Derby was designated a state landmark and -- thanks to the Baird Foundation's guarantee on a $450,000 mortgage loan -- the non-profit Graycliff Conservancy was able to purchase it.

In 2010 the hordes of tourists milling about Buffalo will also be able to enjoy major international exhibitions in a reinvigorated Albright-Knox Art Gallery, whose status as a world-class player in the art world was solidified because of the ambitious renovation program of 1998 that brought the gallery's buildings and systems up to competitive trim. Inventive and far-reaching exhibitions mounted by new gallery curators Douglas Dreishpoon and Claire Schneider, both appointed in 1998, would make the Albright-Knox one of the best places in the world to see advanced art.

Meanwhile, across the street at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, the percipient purchase in 1998 of "Fireflies and Lightning," one of Charles Burchfield's great works from the Buffalo watercolorist's last years, has turned the museum into an international exhibition and study center for an artist, who by 2010 is likely to be considered one of the supreme masters of the 20th century.

--Richard Huntington

--Colin Dabkowski

Erie County Executive-elect Mark Poloncarz delivers his victory speech at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Buffalo, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011. Photo by Derek Gee / Buffalo News

County Executive-elect Mark Poloncarz, the county comptroller who won a surprise victory over incumbent Chris Collins in November, is in the midst of setting his agenda for the next four years.

One of the most hotly contested issues in the campaign was funding for cultural organizations and libraries, which Collins substantially slashed from the 2011 and 2012 budgets. And though it's unclear exactly what role that issue played in Poloncarz' victory, it's plain to see that the incoming county executive sees county support for the arts far differently than his predecessor.

During his campaign, Poloncarz pledged to restore funding to organizations that were slashed by Collins. And on Tuesday, the Erie County Legislature helped him deliver on that promise by voting to give $931,841 in the 2012 budget to groups who lost out on funding this year.

This morning, I talked with Poloncarz about his plans concerning arts and culture in Erie County. Our conversation follows after the jump.

Continue reading "Under Poloncarz, what's next for the arts?" »

On Thanksgiving, the Toronto Star printed a roundup of Western New York cultural activities by its theater critic, Richard Ouzounian. He dropped by recently to check out Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House and Graycliff Estate, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and Burchfield Penney Art Center, Shea's Performing Arts Center and MusicalFare Theatre's production of "A Class Act." Read it here.

--Colin Dabkowski

On Friday, the long-germinating (and much buzzed-about) documentary "Buffalo Unsrcipted" will debut in the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center in a program beginning at 6. We'll have an interview with filmmaker Jason Clement in Gusto on Friday. In the meantime, check out this teaser the "Unscripted" team put together to whet your appetite for the big screening:

--Colin Dabkowski

For the past week, a team of young staffers from the National Trust for Historic Preservation has been in town to collect interviews for "Buffalo Unscripted," a promotional project that will screen during the National Trust's conference here in October. The trio -- Leigh Ivey, Jason Clement and Julia Rocchi -- was nice enough to take a short break from interviewing folks at a West Side block party on Sunday afternoon and answer some of the same quesitons they've been posing to Buffalonians since they arrived here. Judging by what they had to say (not to mention the impressions they've left, nicely compiled here by the National Trust), it's clear their sojourn in Buffalo has been a fruitful one.

Here's a little coda to their trip. Note: The finally tally of people who participated in the "Buffalo Unscripted" filming was 516, far more than the number I cited in the video. (And please forgive the shaky video and low audio -- after I ask my first question, you'll want to crank up the volume):

--Colin Dabkowski

Charles Griffasi, the indefatigable arts advocate and community event organizer who has put his stamp dozens of cultural festivals and initiatives over the past half-century, is at it again.

His Cultural Walk of Fame, a sort of idiosyncratic tribute to some of Western New York's most interesting cultural exports, has been an curious fixture on a short stretch of Elmwood Avenue for the past several years. And last Friday, Griffasi and his organization, Cultural Concert International, added 10 new names to the sidewalk tribute.

They include the composer David Shire, Lucille Ball, dancer Tony DeMarco, actress Amanda Blake, television writer Tom Fontana, concert pianist Leonard Pennario, singer Rick James, philanthropist Seymour H. Knox, Jr.

I haven't been by yet to see if the suggestion I made last year -- for Griffasi to hire a copy editor to avoid the sorts of embarrassing mistakes that have appeared in past additions to the walk -- was taken to heart. But typos or no, the Cultural Walk is a welcome addition a busy pedestrian thoroughfare and a worthy tribute to the region's cultural heritage.

--Colin Dabkowski