Arts and Entertainment

American Style Magazine recently ranked Buffalo as one of the top ten arts destinations in the U.S. Here are just a few of the many arts and entertainment attractions that make Buffalo a lively cultural hub:

Buffalo is home to the Albright-Knox Gallery, housing one of the world's finest collections of modern painting and sculpture.

Art News hailed UB's Anderson Gallery as "a shrine to a world-class collection of contemporary art."

The nationally renowned Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra performs in Kleinhans Music Hall. Designed by the famed Finnish father-and-son team, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Kleinhans itself is widely admired both for its acoustic qualities and for its architectural beauty.

UB's own Slee Concert Hall is also a rich cultural resource for the Western New York community, giving over two hundred concerts per year.

Hallwall's Contemporary Arts Center art space in Buffalo showcases progressive visual art and other avant-garde cultural performance.

The theater district in downtown Buffalo offers New York State's richest and most extensive network of theaters outside of New York City. There is something for every theater lover in Buffalo, from the lavish operas, musicals, and ballets at the ornate Shea's Performing Arts Center, to contemporary Broadway shows at Studio Arena Theater, to productions of Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde plays at the intimate Irish Classical Theater.

Ontario's Stratford Festival, the largest theater company in North America and the second-largest Shakespeare festival in the world, is within a two-hour drive of the Buffalo-Niagara region.

Shakespeare enthusiasts can also enjoy the Bard's work within Buffalo's city limits at "Shakespeare in Delaware Park," a free, open-air, seasonal production.

Just over the Canadian border in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, the Shaw Festival (the second-largest theater company in North America) offers world-class productions of plays by George Bernard Shaw and other modern dramatists.

Nearby, New York's Chautauqua Institution, a famed gathering place for artists and scholars since it was founded in the 19th century, attracts 180,000 guests each season.