Drivers who frequently pass the front of Albright-Knox on Elmwood Avenue might find themselves doing a double take.
The iconic Nancy Rubins' "Monochromatic One" statue, better known as her canoes, was moved, but it didn't go too far.
As the sun rose over Buffalo Thursday, crews carefully loaded the nearly 25,000 pound sculpture onto a flatbed truck moving it from the west side of the campus to the east side of the campus.
The trip only took about 30 minutes to get the sculpture on the Hoyt Lake side of the gallery, but before that, there was six months of planning.
It all happened in preparation of the gallery's $160 million expansion project.
But they didn't want to just pick any new place for the sculpture.
“For an artwork like this it’s not really the sculpture it’s not just the materials it’s made of his really it is really the landscape around it that defines it so it’s a conversation and a dialogue between the artwork and it’s setting,” said Janne Sirén, the gallery’s director.
Once the sculpture was on its new side of the campus, it was a lengthy process for crews to move it on its pedestal.
The move stopped people in their tracks.
"It intrigued me,” said James Hall. “I just had to stop and see it and it took me a while to realize that those are all boats that someone put together. It's great.”
After completing this moving process, Albright Knox is one step closer to breaking ground on construction.
"Most of our public artwork on the campus has already been moved to safer locations or storage for the duration of construction so this one was really the biggest challenge,” Sirén said. “We don't have another one of this caliber that presents a challenge. Jaume Plensa's ‘Laura,’ which is on the north side of the 1905 building, the statue of the girl, that will stay in location during the construction. We'll just create a protective crate around it for the construction period.”
Even though the gallery will be closed during the time of construction, community members are happy about its growth.
"It's for the betterment of the community, it makes Buffalo a more appealing place, and anything like that I'm all for it," said Hall.
The last day the gallery will be open to the public is November 3.
They expect it to reopen in early 2022.
