In late March, Dan and Tina and I drove up to Buffalo for the opening of Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-Garde in the 1970s at Albright Knox Gallery. The show was curated by former Carnegie International assistant curator Heather Pesanti, and represents the culmination of three years’ intensive research. We came into the city from the south, and passed through Buffalo’s (post)industrial waterfront on our way to our hotel. I’ve seen a few abandoned steel mills in my day, but found the scale of Buffalo’s grain elevators astounding. Wish made a similar impression later that evening: all three of us were pretty well floored by the sheer scope of the show—which includes not only visual art, performance, and film, but literature and music as well—and the extraordinary roster of artists that have called Buffalo home.
