Reckoning With Reform
Rochester, Buffalo, & Western New York
IAC’s 28th Annual Arts and Crafts Conference
September 23 – 27, 2026
In IAC’s 28th Annual Arts and Crafts Conference, we delve into Western New York including Rochester, Buffalo, and East Aurora, exploring their rich expressions of the Movement, the region’s receptivity to social, political, economic and aesthetic reform, and the Movement’s ongoing manifestations. We look at buildings and objects alongside the creative communities, artisan guilds, and enterprising firms that produced them, while striving to uncover the ethical and social dimensions of the Movement and their salience for today’s culture.
Founded in 1817 along the Genesee River, the city of Rochester quickly became a hub in Western New York for trade, commerce, and industry. In 1897, critically acclaimed artists such as M. Louise Stowell and Harvey Ellis co-founded the Rochester Arts and Crafts Society and contributed significantly to the Movement’s growth and educational legacy. Stowell, an instructor at the Mechanics Institute (the forerunner of the Rochester Institute of Technology [RIT]), wrote in 1892 in an article for the Educational Gazette, that “nothing should be careless in ornament or design, but should be faithfully thought out and patiently evolved,” arguably an unsurpassed articulation of the Movement’s ethos.
In 1832 the city of Buffalo was founded on the Eastern edge of Lake Erie, along the Erie Canal. Buffalo’s prime geographical location supported the local economy through grain import and export and steel production. As businesses flourished and the city expanded, the architecture of the region began to reflect these shifts towards reform, notably in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, a pioneer of the Prairie Style and Louis Sullivan, the “father of skyscrapers.”
A host of social movements and economic growth had already flourished in Western New York. The women’s suffrage movement was active in the region as was the abolition movement. New technologies pioneered by Eastman Kodak democratized photography. The second industrial revolution spurred urban growth and mass-production of consumer goods. In response to these changes, communities such as the Roycroft Campus, founded by Elbert Hubbard in 1895, promoted a Utopian vision with craft at its heart.
As we further IAC’s engagement in Western New York to explore key artistic, stylistic, philosophical, and sociocultural manifestations of the Movement in Rochester, Buffalo and East Aurora the conference will advance awareness of the region’s vital role in shaping and informing the Arts & Crafts Movement and its ongoing expressions in the United States.
IAC is grateful for the generous support of the Marie + John Zimmermann Fund, Barbara Nitchie Fuldner, BULOVA, American Fine Arts Magazine, and The Magazine ANTIQUES.
Our thanks as well to The George Eastman Museum, The Genesee Country Village and Museum, Roycroft Campus, Grace Episcopal Church, The Wendell Castle Studio, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Darwin D. Martin House and Graycliff Estate, and Visit Rochester (as of September 13, 2026).
