Several members of Buffalo’s Arts Commission are stepping down over concerns that the city’s public art system is being sidelined by Mayor Sean Ryan and his administration.
Catherine Gillespie, who has served as the chair of the Buffalo Arts Commission for nearly 17 years, submitted her letter of resignation to Ryan on June 1, but she said she hasn’t gotten a response and communication overall has been poor.
For Gillespie, the new concern is the commission itself, due to the city eliminating its staffed executive director position last December.
“It's really Mayor Ryan's intention to disenfranchise the arts commission by taking away the staff,” she said.
A representative from Ryan's office emailed the following statement to BTPM NPR in response to concerns outlined in Gillespie's letter of resignation:
"As part of the administration’s broader efforts to evaluate and improve city operations, we are reviewing how the City supports public art and cultural initiatives, including recommendations that will be put forward by the CREATE Task Force. That process includes incorporating new voices, perspectives, and ideas while ensuring Buffalo continues to support a thriving arts and cultural community. We thank Catherine Gillespie for her many years of service to the Buffalo Arts Commission, including more than 16 years as chair, and for her longstanding dedication to public art in Buffalo.”
Gillespie said about $2 million dollars in public art projects are now under contract, bonded or in the pipeline without clear oversight, and the commission's loss of its dedicated staff support now presents obstacles to keeping public art projects moving. She also said the city lost out on a donated sculpture from a nationally known artist because the commission could not act in time.
“All the commission members are volunteers, so we can't write contracts, write [RFP]s, sign contracts, you know, etc., and so, without a staff person, there's no way of really going forward," she said.
Gillespie said other commissioners who have either submitted letters of recommendation or expressed their intent to resign from the board include Arthur Norman Lewin, Virginia Batchelor and Don Siuta.
Siuta has devoted 32 years as a volunteer member of the commission and is the chair of its conservation committee. As of late, he said the commission has been told when it can meet and what it can discuss.
“We usually meet once a month," Siuta said. "We were told we don’t need anything more than four or five meetings a year; yes, we do."
The resignations follow years of questions about Buffalo’s arts funding process. BTPM previously found that since 2020, the city allocated about $1.6 million for arts, cultural and anti-violence groups — but only about 12% had gone out.
Both Siuta and Gillespie raised concerns about the city's percent-for-art process, which is supposed to tie public art funding to certain capital projects.
Siuta said Ryan's attitude toward the commission feels like "betrayal," especially after he ran much of his mayoral campaign on supporting the arts. Siuta said that at one meeting, Ryan expressed that he did not intend to support funding for small cultural organizations.
"I think that the commission does a lot of good for Buffalo, and for it to be sidetracked like this, blindsided, just it's hurtful," Siuta said. "I'm very disappointed in it, and it is breaking my heart; it really is, that this is going on."
Commissioners agree the bigger issue is what happens next to Buffalo’s public art collection. The commission has helped guide repairs and restoration work on pieces including the McKinley Monument and the Young Lincoln statue. Members of the commission say that without oversight, the city risks poor conservation decisions and damage to taxpayer-funded public art.
“This is not about me. This is about what’s happening to the art in the city and to the commission as a whole," Gillespie said.
