Happy Birthday Al!
Today is the 110th anniversary of Al Hirschfeld's birth. Gone ten years, he is still a constant presence on Broadway due to the theater named for him on 45th street, and of course in the hearts of many theater-goers. In the last ten years, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation has presented 22 exhibitions of his work across the country and in Europe. We have worked with the New York Board of Education to create a curriculum for grades K through 12 based entirely on his life and work. We have published three catalogues, primarily of images never collected before, and of course, created this website where visitors can look up everything he ever drew, painted, or printed by performer, production, publication, date, or genre. If you don't follow Al on Twitter of Facebook, you are missing your daily Hirschfeld selected from the same date in history. People have never had the opportunity to see so much of Hirschfeld's work.
This fall we will present a new exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (where his barber chair and drawing table reside) that is sure to be full of revelations for even the most seasoned admirer. And in we are also working on a great new show for 2015 at the New York Historical Society that will bring together masterworks from private and public collection.
So raise a glass, draw a line, or go the theater, ballet or a film in his honor.