Preliminary Research:

Mind map of ideas:

Int Studio 1_ Bridge 4 ideas

Notes during Archive visit:

People mentioned:

• Michael Colby
• Sidney Colby
• Ernest Hollings
• Dana Andrews
• Ben Bodne – owner of hotel
• Irene papas and Jackie Onassis
• Director Michael Cacoyannis
• Joe DiMaggio
• Maya Angelou

1952-1982

Photo – Algonquin lobby: Bernie Chubet (Renee’s third husband)

Oak Room

Rose Room

Richard Nixon and Sidney Colby (Algonquin Lobby)

Built in 1902 –

Kevin Fitzpatrick – President of the Dorothy Parker society has a good history of the hotel on his Dorothy Parker society website –

Create my own, modern day round table

Celebrate the legacy of the Algonquin Cat – Hamilton and Matilda

Proposal:

Original works of art or design:

• I hope to base this portion of the assignment on an event called “the Algonquin Cat’s Annual Celebration & Cat Fashion Show”
• The runway event rose awareness of pets that need homes, and benefited the nonprofit The Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals.
• Every year there is a theme, last year it was “it’s a small world” where cats dressed up as representatives from 9 different countries

Idea 1: Coloring book:

• Create a coloring book based around the Algonquin’s annual cat/feline fashion show.
• Each page will have black and white illustrations of the different cats (In their funky costumes!), distinguished guests and settings that are reminiscent of the event.
• Some pages may include bits of color to act as inspiration
• The main highlights of the book should be the Algonquin Cats – Hamlet and Matilda!
• Some text could be included – so as people are coloring, they learn about the event, the hotel and the charity it supports

Idea 2: Invitation / brochure:  

• Unlike the coloring book, this would have fewer pages
• There will be pages that discuss the event in depth i.e. quick blurb
• The illustrations will be more refined (use of color and shading will be necessary depending on style I wish to adopt)
• I will use the Algonquin Newsletters (that I found from Fales) and past invitations or promotions for the event as guidance/ as a reference point.

Risograph poster:

The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors, and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of “The Vicious Circle”, as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929.

• For this portion, I want to create my own adaptation of the round table group and apply it to the modern day.
• So far, I have jotted down a few notable and influential people that I believe would embody the values of the original group. – this can be found in my mind map.
• Essentially I want to re-create the iconic “Round table” illustration by Al Hirschfield, that was made in 1962, and adapt its layout and premise to my own artistic style and knowledge of culture today.

Research: 

Presentation: (Google Slides) 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TbmPUha4FyeYeg7zFOUu7Chspv4LUC-Q7PfVYL7Obbo/edit?usp=sharing

Speaker Notes:

Located at 59 W. 44th Street in New York City’s Theater District in Midtown Manhattan, the Algonquin Hotel has stood for almost 115 years as the oldest hotel in the city.

Despite changing hands a few times in the last few decades, the hotel still maintains its literary and celebrity reputation.

The Round Table was an informal group of American literary men and women who met daily for lunch on weekdays at a large round table in the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 1920s and ’30s. The Algonquin Round Table began meeting in 1919, and within a few years its participants included many of the best-known writers, journalists, and artists in New York City. Among them were Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, Franklin P. Adams, Marc Connelly, Harold Ross, Harpo Marx, and Russell Crouse. The Round Table became celebrated in the 1920s for its members’ lively, witty conversation and urbane sophistication. Its members gradually went their separate ways, however, and the last meeting of the Round Table took place in 1943.

Each summer, The Algonquin Hotel opens its doors to celebrate its special feline resident with a party, cat fashion show, and adoption event. Between 2014 and 2019, the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals was the beneficiary of this fun celebration.

The Algonquin Hotel in Midtown Manhattan has been the home to 18 cats residing within its legendary walls since the 1930s, including Hamlets and Matildas. Each cat who has reigned at The Algonquin has been a rescue. The Algonquin adopted the latest Hamlet from Bideawee in Wantagh, Long Island, where he resided after being found as a stray living in a feral cat colony. Very popular with hotel guests, The Algonquin Cat receives fan mail and gifts from all around the world. 

Final Pieces: 

Risograph print:

Additional Art piece of choice – Coloring book: 

First draft (for final class/critique): 

Coloring book (pdf pages edition – meant for booklet printing)

Final draft:

Coloring book final

Reflection (overall):

For this last project, the final artworks that I created were to have been influenced and inspired by the Downtown Collection at New York University’s Fales Library and Special Collections or a different institutional archive in New York. Therefore, the majority of this project was dependent on thorough Archival research; research involving primary sources held in an archive, a Special Collections library, or another repository. Before going to visit Fales, my classmates and I each had to request up to three different Archival resources relating to a topic of our choice. This required me to become familiarized with the Fales Archive Catalog Search – an online search engine specifically meant for browsing the Fales collection. By typing a keyword such as the name of an author, a location or a movement, then any available resources that are connected to that topic will appear. While this first part may not seem so tedious, the second part was. After narrowing down to a single topic, you as a patron would also have to seed through the listed resources and choose three which are most relevant/applicable to your project. As I found out while browsing through the items I requested, Archival sources can be manuscripts, documents, records (including electronic records), objects, sound, and audiovisual materials, or other materials. Going into this requesting or archival preparation stage, I did not know what it was I wanted to learn more about. I knew I wanted to explore the past somehow, particularly relating to past unconventional art movements or events. However, other than that, I was clueless. In times like these, I always reach out to my parents for advice. While talking on the phone, our conversation started gearing towards the hospitality industry (as both my parents have a long background within that occupational field) and old, historic hotels within the city. This leads me to look up what the oldest, running hotel is in New York City, and that was how I landed on my current topic: The Algonquin Hotel. Seeing as I was limited to only three requests with Fales, I decided to also reach out to a representative of the hotel (and fortunately someone who I know quite well) to gather even more information, particularly photographs and memorabilia, relating to the Algonquin Round Table, The Algonquin Cat, and the annual Algonquin Feline Fashion Show as these were all key areas of interests for me. For the Risograph, I wanted to make my own modern-day interpretation of the original Round Table, including established and influential figures who either reside in or are originally from the city, just so that the concept of convening frequently would be a real obligation for the organization. For the art piece of my choice, I chose to create a coloring book about the Algonquin Feline Fashion show because I felt that, after having researched the annual event and the charities it supports, there has not been enough publicity for it. Also, the Algonquin has already published two coloring books for their resident cats so creating a new one and perhaps having it actually be featured at the hotel would be an achievable outcome. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this project as it made me more considerate and informed about archives – so much so that I have already set a personal goal for the upcoming semester to use a variety of archives and thus archival collections to create new and exciting works. It was also interesting to have so much of the final piece or pieces be dependent on research – depending on how much was conducted, the research findings seemed to dictate the direction, scope, and content of the pieces whereby the more information I learned about my topic, the more meaning and care there is behind the creation of each artwork.