Janne Sirén, the director of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Upstate New York, will depart his post in October after more than a decade, opening up yet another top role at a US art institution.
Sirén oversaw the museum as it expanded dramatically in 2023, adding another building to its campus that doubled the AKG’s square footage. The expansion, which cost $230 million, was well-received, both within the art press and by locals, who flocked to the museum. The AKG reported that, in the year following the reopening, the museum received 340,000 visitors, a record for the institution.
But Sirén’s leadership has more recently come under scrutiny in the local Buffalo media.
His departure was announced by the museum nearly three months after the Buffalo News reported that he had used a museum loan to help finance his $710,000 home. The Erie County Comptroller’s Office alleged that Sirén had failed to pay off the museum’s loan, leading one representative to say she was “not sure why.” The Buffalo News reported that the loan “appears to violate state laws governing nonprofit organizations.”
The AKG said in a statement at the time that Sirén’s loan was “a relatively common practice in executive recruitment,” and added that the museum operates “full compliance with all applicable laws and audit standards.”
The museum’s release announcing Sirén’s departure did not mention the loan at the center of the Buffalo News report. It also did not state where Sirén was headed next.
In a statement on Wednesday, Sirén said that he will now “carve out time for my family and for focused, impactful projects within the art world, working globally as a family ensemble with and for artists, museums and cultural organizations, companies and governments, and private individuals. I will also write and hopefully memorialize some legs of the journey from my native Finland, the land of songs and lakes, to Buffalo and beyond. Love, Learn, and Live—that’s my motto.”
He joined the AKG in 2013, having previously led the Helsinki Art Museum and the Tampere Art Museum, both in Finland. While in Finland, he had also attempted to bring a Guggenheim outpost to Helsinki, to no avail—the city council rejected the plan.
Under his tenure, Scandinavian art became a specialty of the AKG, which now has a dedicated gallery for art of the Nordic region. The museum recently staged “Northern Lights,” a survey of landscapes produced in Scandinavia and Canada—whose border is close to Buffalo—between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The museum noted that he had greatly expanded the institution’s collection, which grew by just under 2,000 objects under Sirén. Among the additions to the AKG holdings in that time was the estate of Marisol, a Pop artist who bequeathed it to the museum upon her death in 2016; the museum organized an acclaimed traveling retrospective of her art that first opened in 2023 and landed at the museum the following year. The museum also touted its acquisition of a large-scale landscape by Anselm Kiefer, a German painter whose foundation counts Sirén as its president.
Alice F. Jacobs, president of the AKG board, said in a statement that Sirén’s achievements were “unique,” adding, “Under his leadership, the museum has celebrated its deep community roots and international presence; combining architecture, programs and networks to grow and sustain the museum for generations.”
