By Elmer Ploetz

To the editor of a nonprofit that is barely five months old, 50 years seems unimaginable.

Yet that is the case for Hallwalls as it celebrates its “Actual 50th Birthday Bash” tonight at 6.

“Actual 50th Birthday Bash” because the arts space/gallery is celebrating its 50th anniversary all season long (from the past July to next July). Details on tonight’s event are HERE.

But on Dec. 18, 1974, artist Robert Irwin delivered a “conversation and lecture” at Buffalo State College. Irwin, who died just last year, was known as a kind of minimalist who focused on the use of light and space. The lecture was the first of thousands of events yet to come. If you want to check out just about everything ever presented at Hallwalls

The original location of Hallwalls was Essex Street, on Buffalo’s West Side, with moves to 700 Main Street, the Tri-Main Center and in 2006 to its current location in Delaware Avenue in the Babeville complex.

Hallwalls’ mark has been felt to such a degree that the Buffalo History Museum is hosting the “10 X 5: 50 Years of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 1975–2025” exhibit through May 25 of next year, and the Buffalo AKG Museum and the University at Buffalo Poetry Collectin hold Hallwalls archives. Hallwalls has become a force that the older institutions in Buffalo have grown to accept as a peer organization,

But what makes Hallwalls so special?

It’s easy to point to the impressive list of people who have exhibited, lectured, performed or otherwise been associated with Hallwalls (Harvey Pekar, Karen Finley, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Charles Clough and Ann Magnuson among them). But I think there are a couple of other things worth noting.

One is that Hallwalls has stayed true to its mission, in particular this part of its mission statement: “We are dedicated in particular to work by artists which challenges and extends the traditional boundaries of the various art forms, and which is critically engaged with current issues in the arts and—through the arts—in society. Finally, we believe that the right of freedom of expression for artists, and for free access to their works by interested individuals, must be protected as a fundamental and necessary condition of our mission.”

That means never taking the easy way out.

The second point, though, is Hallwalls’ engagement with the community. It presents a space that is open for whatever needs to be presented or shown. My own documentary, “Bflo Pnk 1.0,” has been screened in Hallwalls’ film screening room as part of the Infringement Festival. It is a regular screening location for some of the Buffalo International Film Festival’s more challenging films.

In fact, when The Buffalo Hive held its first community meeting as we were forming our nonprofit last May, the Hallwalls screening room was where we held it.

There are many other people who have longer, more detailed stories to tell about what Hallwalls has meant to them and the community. Some of them may be there tonight.

Meanwhile … Happy birthday, Hallwalls!