In her preview for the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s exhibition “Wish You Were Here: the Buffalo Avant-Garde in the 1970s,” the New York Times’ Carol Kino elaborates on the birth of several Buffalo art institutions in the 1970s, including Hallwalls, Artpark, Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts, and the Center for Media Study at the University at Buffalo.

Kino’s article highlights Albright-Knox curator Heather Pesanti, who presents this exhibition as “a story [about Buffalo] that wanted and needed to be told,” before delving into the origins of the four art venues that continue to flourish today. 

The exhibition, which runs through July 8, details just how forward-thinking the Queen City was despite the industrial desertion that plagued the Rust Belt simultaneously.

The gallery continues:

Looking back on the art and ideas these groups propagated, one might argue that aspects of postmodern and contemporary art were seeded during this time, and that Buffalo was one of a group of geographic pockets that provided fertile ground for these concepts and methodologies to take hold. Wish You Were Here identifies some of these concepts and examines the various threads of connectivity and collaboration that made Buffalo a site of radical creativity.

The AKAG, 1285 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo, is open until 10 p.m. Friday as part of M&T’s First Fridays at no charge. Otherwise, the gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Details on admission prices can be found here.

Header photo is Charles Simonds’ “Ritual Cairns” from 1974 that’s currently part of the exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.