Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center has moved several times over the past few decades, but one thing has been constant for the past 35 years: “Edmund Cardoni, Executive Director” on the organizational chart. This week Cardoni is wrapping up his tenure as executive director and we asked artist J. Tim Raymond to talk to Cardoni about Hallwalls, Buffalo, the arts and his time here.

By J. Tim Raymond
(Photo above by Stephen Graham)

On the day of the shutdown vote of The Corporation for Public Broadcasting I spent an hour with Edmund Cardoni, executive director of Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center as he neared at his retirement – on Saturday, Aug. 9 – after 35 years of service with one of Buffalo’s leading art institutions.

Since 1975, Hallwalls has hosted over 6,500 events, featuring more than 9,000 artists across visual arts, music, film and more. This past year, the Buffalo History Museum hosted 10 x 5: 50 Years of Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, 1975-2025, highlighting Hallwalls’ role in launching significant movements like The Pictures Generation and its ongoing influence in contemporary culture.

Cardoni began his long association following a literary background, starting in the late 1970s in a creative writing program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he studied with Black Mountain poet, Ed Dorn. From there, during the early 1980s, he was encouraged by Professor Ray Federman at the State University of New York at Buffalo to join the Ph.D. program in Literature, home of Robert Creeley’s well-known Poetics Program.

“When I got here, I was welcomed with open arms because I was connected with the literary community from Boulder to UB,” Cardoni said.

He became familiar with Hallwalls at that time, attending shows and events. During the mid-1980s, Ed became involved with curating Fiction Diction (along with R.D. Pohl), a regular UB literary event hosted at Hallwalls. Soon enough, he was utilizing his writing skills as an occasional grant writer at a time when NEA arts grants were plentiful and offered readily for film, performance and writing, which were featured along with the visual arts. Many of the original Buffalo Hallwalls artists, such as Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo, moved down to Manhattan to further their careers, but it was a time when curators and artists could easily travel back and forth with the cheap air fares of the former People’s Express Airline.

“You could pay somebody $150 and put them up overnight—sometimes staying in our own apartment,” Cardoni said.

Cardoni was formally hired onto the staff as a grant writer in the late 1980s and Hallwalls thrived during that period of creative exchange. It was also a time when they had quite a large staff. He was named executive director in 1991, a decade after his first visit to shows and performances there. It was also a time of great financial challenge necessitating a cutback in staff.

Cardoni said, “We could have very easily closed in 1990-91 due to crises over that time, but we were able to weather all that. We would have had a brief history of just 15 years. Instead, we have a history of 50. That is the main thing I am proud of.”

He makes a point that he preferred having fewer people working, but earning more income than just minimum wage.

During that 1991 era, he was involved with the Media Coalition for Reproductive Rights as a Clinic Defender, videotaping protests of Operation Rescue. Another accomplishment of that year was receiving a $35,000 grant for the 1991 Border Art Workshop at Hallwalls, a residency that hosted a San Diego/Tijuana-based artist collective for interaction with WNY migrant farm workers and their families. As multidisciplinary art has grown, so has community diversity and greater inclusion of LBGTQ artists.

“One of the things that developed from that Border Art Workshop was that Buffalo had become an artist community as strong as New York,” Cardoni said.

His focus has been the general administrative and financial operations of the nonprofit art center, managing grants, maintaining membership and community support through various events. In addition to the several exhibitions with visiting artists each year coordinated entirely by the curators, the center raises funds through annual auctions of works donated from former gallery artists. The center also hosts live drawing events twice a year where local artists create timed drawings that are made available for purchase in an auction.

“We are in a golden age right now,” he said. “There are more opportunities for artists now than back then in the 1980s-’90s.”

Another opportunity for local artists is the annual members show each summer of more than 200 works in the floor-to-ceiling installation, as well as the annual AMID/In Western New York exhibition for a select group to show a body of work each. Curator John Massier has been instrumental in warming the acceptance of many Canadian artists featured in exhibitions. As border issues have risen in the current political climate, recent news that some Canadian artists will no longer be able to participate in the exhibitions requires creative curation to rearrange the exhibition schedule.

“The most dangerous thing we face now is the lack of media press coverage,” he said. “We get more coverage now from TV stations. In the past, we’d have a show – then there would be a review. The artists would have that for their resume. It would also be part of our archive. Cindy Sherman’s CV began with an article from the Buffalo Evening News.”

At the heart of Hallwall’s continued existence is its strategic operating core that promotes collaboration and sharing among organizations and venues. During Cardoni’s tenure, Hallwalls has become pivotal to the nonprofit arts culture of Western New York. Former Development and Communications Director, Parrish Gibbons has been preparing to step into the role of executive director. The Buffalo Arts Community awaits Ed Cardoni’s next chapter.