Looking Back: Lucas Samaras’s Mirrored Room, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Looking Back: Lucas Samaras’s Mirrored Room was presented at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum during its 2023 reopening (June 12, 2023 – January 29, 2024). Installed in the M&T Gallery, a free-admission space, the exhibition highlights Mirrored Room (1966), a sculptural work the museum has held in its collection since its acquisition that same year.

The exhibition graphics were developed within the Buffalo AKG institutional identity, originally designed by Wkshps (Chris Wu, Eric Price, Sarah Demeuse, Ivy Yixue Li, Ella Viscardi). The identity typefaces, AKG Sans and Algebra, both by Commercial Type, were used throughout.

The exhibition design was conceived architecturally: large-scale titles in reflective vinyl, curatorial texts, and archival images were organized within a grid derived from the sculpture’s exterior mirrored panel structure. This grid also referenced a 1966 Members’ Opening invitation from the museum’s archives—the year the work was first exhibited—translating its typographic tone into the contemporary AKG identity.

The exhibition was curated by Associate Curator Andrea Alvarez and designed by Katharine Wimett. Photography by Brenda Bieger.

Eric Price, formerly of Wkshps, on AKG Sans:

Reopening in 2023 with a new OMA-designed addition, Albright-Knox Art Gallery needed a new identity to go along with their new name—Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

While the length and intermingled acronym both posed a challenge, we decided to embrace them in a typographically-driven approach that uses unconventional, alternate-universe forms for the A, K, and G in a custom typeface based on Neuzeit and similar classic grotesques. With enthusiasm for the direction, we collaborated with Christian Schwartz of Commercial Type to create AKG Sans.