The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has reached a major milestone in its ongoing $160 million expansion project overseen by Shohei Shigematsu and OMA in cooperation with Cooper Robertson. 

Construction has topped out on the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building on the soon-to-be renamed museum’s Buffalo, New York campus, clearing the way for a 2022 reopening that will significantly improve the gallery’s historic footprint.

“This is a remarkable moment,” director Dr. Janne Siren said at a ceremony observing the occasion Wednesday. “We are about one year from the completion of this project that will make Buffalo and our community so proud, will create jobs and prosperity for the people who live here and will be an attraction for people from all across the world who will want to come and visit us,” 

With the steel frame now in place, contractors will soon begin the concrete pour for the building with a glass-wall curtain installation to follow that will begin sometime in the fall. 

The new Buffalo AKG Art Museum will feature new underground parking facilities which allows the 1-acre former above-ground lot to be repatriated into a vibrant green lawn. Improved entryways and an added public space designed by Olafur Eliasson in the gallery’s former sculpture garden combine with a new education center to fundamentally reshape the transformed museum into a more open and inclusive, community-centered institution that serves the city as much as it upholds the mission of arts education that dates to its founding in 1905.

“Building the future of a city and a community is a monumental undertaking, one that is possible only when people from all walks of life band together to actualize a shared vision,” Siren said in a statement. “All of us at the Buffalo AKG are excited to welcome the world to the new museum when it opens [next year].”