Robert Buck was the Director of the Albright-Know Art Gallery from 1973 to 1983.

John Cage (1912-1992) was an avant garde composer and music director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Robert Creeley (1926-2005), "often cited as one of the most important and influential poets of the last half-century, was a member of the UB faculty from 1966 to 2003, when he left to become a Distinguished Professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Creeley was an originator of the "Black Mountain" school of poetry, named after the North Carolina college from which he held a bachelor's degree and where he once taught with poets Charles Olson and Robert Duncan, both of whom also had lasting relationships with UB. Black Mountain established a new and anti-academic poetic tradition that has been reflected in the work of many poets who have come to occupy significant places in the 20th-century literary canon.

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) "was a leader of the American avant-garde throughout his seventy year career and is considered one of the most important choreographers of our time."

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) "was an extraordinary, pioneering composer who made an impressive and unique contribution to 20th-century American music. He also was Edgar Varese Professor of Composition at the University at Buffalo from 1972 until his death in 1987." He is the noted founder of June in Buffalo, the annual festival and conference for emerging composers of new music.