I’ll come right out and say it: Buffalo has a knack for fucking things up. For a city that carries most of its glory in its past and the importance of its landmarks, Buffalo has a hazy history when it comes to acting in its best interests. In 1950, an office building that stood on Seneca Street in downtown Buffalo was demolished. Big deal, right? Actually, it was, seeing that it was the Larkin Building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Oops. And just this month, the Atwater House, a historic and architecturally significant home built in 1894, was demolished to make room for an expanding restaurant on Elmwood Avenue. It seems obvious that in Buffalo, nothing can stand in the way of progress—consequences be damned.

The evidence of this progress, however, is not always so clear.

Now Buffalo finds itself in the middle of another significant debate. In November, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery announced that it plans to sell a large number of ancient objects to provide funds for future acquisitions. This debate has come to the forefront of news in recent weeks and has sparked a great deal of controversy both within the local community and among art lovers across the world. Justly so. The problem is the same one Buffalo has faced for decades: Should we preserve the past at the expense of progress, or destroy the past in order to enrich the future?

Buffalo’s answer seems to be the latter. Whether or not to tear down an old house becomes a simple decision when the promise of profit is introduced. The Albright-Knox, following in the Buffalo tradition, has decided quite literally to sell the past in order to buy the future. But it will provide a large endowment, so it’s totally cool, right?

Arguable. In most cases, the powers that bring about the decisions are seemingly opposed to acknowledging dissenting opinions. The Albright-Knox has adopted a stubborn stance of, “It’s our house and we make the rules.” I almost expect them to run home with their baseball and cry to their mom that the other kids were being mean. If, instead of the closed stance and latent attacks that have been appearing in print, an open dialogue could be reached involving leaders of both sides of the debate, perhaps an agreeable solution could be attained.

I acknowledge that the Albright-Knox’s mission is to collect and display modern and contemporary art, and that it is widely hailed as one of the foremost modern art galleries in the country. But without the ancient pieces, how are we to trace our progression? How are we to appreciate how far we have come? Selling ancient art to fund the future acquisition of contemporary pieces is like selling your copies of Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid to fund the purchase of novels by Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster. It is perhaps worthwhile to turn attention to the future, yes, but to lose sight of the past causes that future to lose some of its meaning. How are we to know where we are going if we cannot remember from whence we came?

In the end, controversy will be good for business. The Albright-Knox has been in the headlines for weeks and on the covers of various publications, including this one. Any publicity is good publicity, as they say. In its essence, this debate is over differing views of how to protect one of Buffalo’s most important cultural icons and ensure its survival in the future. Despite the conflicting opinions, one thing has already been made clear: people are concerned and passionate enough to voice their thoughts on this issue in every available forum. With backing from such a dedicated community, no matter what happens, the Albright-Knox will continue to provide Buffalo with a quality venue to appreciate art in all its forms.