Some rooms in New York still hum when you whisper. The Algonquin’s Oak Room hums like a well-kept secret—polished wood, soft lamps, and the afterglow of a thousand perfect sentences. You can almost hear Dorothy Parker testing a line against the rim of a martini glass.
Into that storied hush, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation launched “Hirschfeld’s Sondheim” and unveiled “Strokes of Genius: Hirschfeld at the Algonquin,” an exhibition running through Sept. 20, from noon to 7 p.m. daily. Theater’s pulse met the city’s memory, and the room kept time.
The book, a deluxe 11×14 compendium from Abrams ComicArts, gathers more than fifty drawings—twenty-five ready-to-frame prints that catch Sondheim’s world before the curtain rises. Bernadette Peters ushers us in; Ben Brantley confers context; David Leopold traces the thread.
From West Side Story to Sweeney Todd, from Merrily’s ache to Sunday’s hush, Hirschfeld’s line distills the moment to its unmistakable truth. It is all nerve and grace. The exhibition answers with a living archive: Judy Garland at The Palace; Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence in imperial stride; Gwen Verdon in a blaze; Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in moral chiaroscuro.
Sondheim constellations glow nearby—Do I Hear a Waltz?, a Sunday study, Forum’s antic tumble, Passion’s fever—some signed by Hirschfeld, Julie Andrews, even Sondheim himself. It is the first New York gallery-style Hirschfeld show in over a decade, and it feels timely, not nostalgic—like striking a match in a velvet room.
Then I turned a corner and found Fran Lebowitz rendered with that surgical stillness only Hirschfeld could grant. I came to New York for women like Fran and rooms like this. I half-expected her to appear and issue a sentence so accurate it rattled the glassware. Instead, I stood still, let the ink speak, and remembered why art and theater matter: they braid intellect with appetite; they preserve the decadence of yesterday inside the discipline of today; they keep the city honest while letting it dazzle.
This is how we modernize without bleaching the soul: we keep the wit, the rigor, the audacity. We keep the elegance—then let it move.
So go—see “Strokes of Genius: Hirschfeld at the Algonquin.” Take home Hirschfeld’s Sondheim and frame a page that makes your walls think. Browse the extended online show this fall. And if, like me, you believe line and lyric are lifelines, support the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. Help the ink keep dancing, the legends stay legible, and the next generation find its voice—in a room that still hums.
