Janne Sirén to Depart as Director of Buffalo AKG Art Museum
3April 29, 2026
Finnish art historianJanne Sirénwill step down as director of theBuffalo AKG Art Museumafter thirteen years in the role, theArt Newspaperreports. Sirén will depart in October and return to Europe; the museum’s board of directors will begin searching for his replacement this summer.
“Dr. Sirén’s accomplishments are unique,” said Alice F. Jacobs, president of the museum’s board of directors, in a statement. “He built both a world-class museum campus and a platform—one that connects the Buffalo AKG to its community in Western New York and to the global art world simultaneously.”
Sirén began his tenure at the institution in 2013, when it was still known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery. He inaugurated the museum’s Public Art Initiative, a collaborative project between the institution and public and private sectors that realized more than sixty public art projects in Western New York. It remains the only initiative of its kind in the US today. Related Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu Departs to Lead Guggenheim Museum Hired Amid Great Fanfare, Patricia Marroquin Norby, Met’s Inaugural Curator of Native American Art, Quietly Left
Under Sirén’s leadership, museum grew its collection as well as its endowment, which increased from $31.3 million in 2013 to $79.3 million in 2026. The Buffalo AKG underwent a multiyear renovation and expansion that was paid for via a $230 million capital campaign. Following the project’s conclusion, in 2023, annual visitorship surged to thirty thousand; the number of staff, which was sixty-two when Sirén came onboard, now stands at two hundred.
“There are always a combination of professional and personal factors when it comes to a decision like this,” Sirén told the Art Newspaper. “One marker in this process of starting to think about next chapters was the completion of the campus expansion project. I would say another, more personal, factor is that now that my children are grown and have left the house, I’ve started looking at the world differently.” Sirén, who noted that he grew up “spending time in the literal wilderness, taking solo hikes north of the Arctic Circle and diving in the North Atlantic,” said he was looking forward to reconnecting with nature.