Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
Established in 1975, Hallwalls is renowned for its exhibitions of contemporary art, film and video screenings, live jazz, new music and performances.
Hallwalls was founded on Buffalo's West Side in late 1974 by a group of young visual artists (some of them still just students at the time)including Diane Bertolo, Charles Clough, Nancy Dwyer, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, and Michael Zwackwho carved an exhibition space out of the walls of the hall outside their studios in a former icehouse.
From the beginning, their interest was in exhibiting new work by local artists (including, at first, their own) and providing opportunities for exchange between them and artists in other cities, by inviting visiting artists to give talks or create installations, and by organizing exchange shows with similar spaces springing up in other cities.
Their focus was always interdisciplinary as well as outward looking, featuring not only visual artists, but also musicians, writers, filmmakers, and video and performance artists. Hallwalls soon established itself as an influential force for innovation within the community as well as nationally, and stretched its then minimal resources by joining forces with other cultural institutionsboth larger and smalleron collaborative projects.
All of these founding principles and artistic strategies continue to guide the organization today. But in the ensuing three decades, Hallwalls necessarily enlarged not only its reputation in the field, but its outreach within the community, embracing wider and more diverse publics.
Hallwalls' programs grew in distinctly different directions, depending on their curators' interests and the needs of the disciplines and communities they served, always unified, however, by Hallwalls' mission to bring the newest and most challenging work in the contemporary arts to the interested public, whether in painting and sculpture, conceptual art, experimental film, video art and activism, documentary film, performance, fiction, jazz, new music, or any number of other art forms that make up Hallwalls' eclectic programming mix.
Gallery hours:
Tues.Fri. 11-6
Sat. 11-2
Sun. & Mon. closed
Info found on:
www.hallwalls.org
Hallwalls
341 Delaware Ave
Buffalo, NY 14202-1804
(716) 854-1694
Image: Hallwalls Exhibitor CHRISTINA WEST
Gallery: TU-F 11am-6pm, SA 1pm-4pm; concerts, performances and screenings are on evenings and weekends
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