Buffalo Rising Online

I understand your frustration with this, but I'm not sure I get the question 'what does Buffalo get from this deaccession?' Uh? Are you proposing some type of death tax on inanimate objects? Boy, seems like the extreme left is using this site to trot out new ideas.

If it hurts you so much, fly back and buy it. Otherwise, let those of us that drive by it everyday try to think up a better use for what's left, otherwise, there will be some new builds in the southwest with pretty slick stone.

I heard on WGRZ that it did not sell....

Any truth?

Just sad there aren't more people with deep pockets in WNY to buy it. Thanks State of NY

By any standards Buffalo has (had) spectacular churches. Here is one example where the Wedt foundation could have used that 2 million dollars to set up a rescue fund to savel these buildings rather than get involved in a contentious lawsuit.

Steel this is an architectural holocaust that will baffle future generations and haunt all of us that allowed this to happen on our watch.

I have trouble understanding how any individual who's ancestors sacrificed to construct one of these masterpieces could not feel a strong personal obligation to support it's survival and mission. (I hate to say this but one wonders if there is any connection between the guilt and the sinking homes!)

I also have trouble understanding how the suburban religious leadership could allow the old churches to rot even if it meant possibly risking their own suburban attendance. Suburban churches should each partner with an adopted endangered city church and hold some services and functions and stay connected. I suspect attendance would grow at each.

I also have trouble understanding how The Church could pull up stakes in communities where God's work is least completed and then completely abandon the properties or encumber their sale with overly restrictive deed covenants.

This is an opportunity for The Church to recapture the level of community leadership that carried it through the centuries. I appeal to The Church to ask the community and their parishioners to once again sacrifice for these great buildings, just as many of their ancestors had. I would be amazed if there were anything short of a successful outpouring of resources and energies. Righteousness is it’s own reward and the rewards to each of those who endeavor on this mission would have to be tremendous!

This is a disgrace by any measure. Last week I attended a wedding in a thousand year old cathedral in Strasbourg, France. At certain times during its history it was vandalized, bombed and neglected but it was always fixed up and it is in good condition. I once visited a 1300 year old temple in Japan, and the situation is the same there. What is wrong with us that we can't think long-term?

To assuage my disappointment I am going to chalk it up to one greedy owner, but I look around and I see so much rotting infrastructure. What is going on?

Buffalobloviator-you make good points

Steel, Thanks for publishing these articles. Do you have a way of correcting the spelling of parish? You spelled it perish in both this article and the referenced article on St. Girard's Parish.

Thanks Ron yes I can fix that.

How many of Buffalo's "architectural salvage" has been shipped outside of the region, anyhow? When I lived in Denver, rumor had it the city's architectural salvage stores, which hadexorbitant prices, imported much of their inventory from Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities where the rate of demolition far outstripped gentrification.

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Huh? This is a blog about the built environment and cultural scene in Buffalo, New York. I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for here.

Steel,

You know I respect your work here very much, including this otherwise good article. But..your description of the sale is disingenuous and inaccurate.

The sale was not limited to antiquities--that was part of the AK's spin and misinformation so that no one would pay too much attention. Dozens of medieval and renaissance items were also sold, and items even later. The sale spanned thousands of years of art history.

The sale was also only possible by the board's taking a scalpel to the directives codified in the museum's (technically the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy's) Restated Certificate of Incorporation. Without consulting the membership, the board removed the following important directive about "deaccesion," which is a useless euphemism for selling for profit:

"No sale of masterpieces; nor, in terms of own collection, of very important works."

Along with removing that obstacle, the museum simply ignores the actual langauge of this Certificate and distorts other directives to create the impression that the museum has only ever been concerned with modern and contemporary art. That's just not what these bylaws say.

What the AK sold in its bonanza were in fact some of the most important pieces of their kind in the world. The success of the sale only points to how much we lost--it's an embarrassment, and most of the reasonable criticism in the art world has pointed to the sale as a terrible mistake. It was not only that, but an insult to many families who do not approve of their gifts being huckstered off, and an insult to the community which the museum is supposed to serve. Service means more than entertainment and pranks, or championing second-rate rubble like the work of Andrea Zittel.

Do you have a count of how many people throughout WNY opposed the AK's decision? Otherwise how can you say the number was "small." The debate within the membership was bitter, and the vote to approve the sale by the membership was far from a landslide (the museum threatened to do it anyway, so the vote was a sham). The debate still burns on, and the museum will continue to lose donations because of this bad management.

It's fine to defend the museum, but it is not fair to belittle the many reasonable people who felt the museum acted with poor judgement and poor civic manners in the way they handled their sale.

EricOak, I could not agree more with you on the de-accession of art via the Albright Knox.

Except Iwould add that its the elitists at theAKAG that consider themselves patrons to their peers and not patrons of the community. You see a patron of the community might specialize in modern and contemporary art but they would have various forms of art that appeals to the tases of the community at large, the city and the region to which it serves.

What the AKAG has turned into is an an elite and effite club bent only on garnering their resumes and the only way they can do that is to abort and dissect its lesser known collects like antiquities and the various periods of traditional art so that it can build a respectable resume to market their resume to peer museums.

The result is that instead of growing their entire collection, they choose to sell off their diversity to those collections that would garner their resumes for their next job to maximize their achievements.

Its really no different than the demolish and park developers that have destroyed Buffalos communities and architectural richness.

Well Eric which ever side you fall on you have to agree that at least the Albright will be reinvesting the assets of the sale back into WNY. It is hard to make any argument that deaccessioning of the city's architectural art as exhibited here at Our Lady of Lourdes is in any way a benefit to the people of Buffalo. I find it odd that events like this or say the recent closing of more churches filled wit magnificent art or the collapse of the Whites Livery are not seen as important as the sale of art that most likely no one in WNY ever laid eyes on. How many stories were written in the Buffalo news about the stripping of this church? I would bet the number is ZERO!

STEEL, I dont want to be negative here but there is ALOT of apathy in Buffalo and while there are pockets of activism, on the whole, there isnt ALOT of patriotism, loyalty and civic pride.

Look around at the simplest of things...and I mean simplest.

Ever been in public and seen the ratty clothes and body odor and bad english

Ever walked down the street and seen the unpaved roads, potholes, broken curbs, broken sidewalks, tree less streets, burned out or non-period street lighting, tree less streets, our unextended light rail, etc

Ever walk down the street and look at the unswept curbs, the untreed streets, unmowed lawns, unpainted property, uncleaned gutters, unrepaired screens and windows, etc.

And somehow we expect our institutions to be different? Apathy extends to the unextended light rail, the 50% leak rate in our water mains, or sewage overflows, our elitist and insulated art museum AKAG, our churchs stripped naked, etc.

Buffalo is making some progress economically and its making progress in citizen activism but average civic loyalty that says...(the above) basic urban responsibilities are intolerable just is hit and miss....

Buffalo is still a city of drinking, fist fights and emaciated civic pride that still springs forth from the groundswell of unskilled factory laborers being told what to do and what to think.

Very very few Buffalonians think for themselves or can think independently and objectively. Look at that Buffalo News which is written at the 4th grade reading level and contains no objective insight...it might as well be printed word for work off of the email or fax machine press release.

Steel,

I completely agree with your lament about these buildings and their riches being stripped and sold. No question. But I strongly feel that the analogy to the AK sales is a misleading one.

The AK sales were a deliberate rejection by a self-absorbed board and management of hundreds of artworks, some of them masterworks. The museum chose not to display these items, so if people have not seen them (and many of us have), it was the institution's fault. That seems to me a more egregious civic failure than the sad pillaging of abandoned churches that long ago lost their rudders. That is perhaps a community failure that we all need to take responsibility for. What the AK did was all the more objectionable because we entrust them to watch over that collection, and the community essentially has no power or say over what the museum does.

But yes, the losses in both artworks and architecture are immense. As far as the AK re-investing into the community: well, sure they have money now to buy new art and bulk up their endowment. But the method is nothing to cheer: it's like a library selling off important books to buy new untested ones and build more bookshelves. Is that the nature of a library? No, it's what a bookstore does. The AK is no longer a museum; it's a gallery in the Madison Ave. sense of the word. And that's not where I will put any money of mine from now on. I'm giving the money I would have given to the AK to the preservation groups in Buffalo--they deserve it far more.

Go to this site for a great story on the Church and its history

http://gapfel.com/Lourdes/

And so it goes....

I think even in this day and age Jesus would have moved his ministry out to the burbs ;)

BuffaloBloviator, you expressed so well the thought that always comes to my mind when thinking about these abandoned churches. Indeed, how can the suburban parishes - made up of parishoners and decendents of parishoners from these churches - stand or sit by while their religious and cultural heritage is vandalized--? And this is cultural vandalism, and as such laws should be passed in urban areas such as Buffalo and My Fair City prohibiting this, or at least requiring something like a special permit with public notice.

I saw the photos on David Torke's site, and even if I didn't know many of the good folks in the pictures personally, I would still be able to recognize the shock and sadness on their faces - feelings I share.

The only possible consolation I can grasp, is that previous articles about this church have mentioned that it might be ideally located to be a community center, perhaps connected in some way with ArtSpace. It's possible that the extensive destruction - which has ruined the interior's historic integrity - could make it easier to initiate a radical repurposing of the building away from religious use. Still, that doesn't justify the desecration.

If Dante were writing today, he would no doubt contemplate an especially gruesome circle of Hell set aside for those who can so wantonly eviscerate a church in the way this one has been.