"vamping venus"

2015 was a banner year for al Hirschfeld and the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. Between the New York Historical Society exhibition and The Hirschfeld Century book published by Alfred A. Knopf, we were able to share hundreds of Hirschfeld artworks with audiences in New York and around the country. Now we are thrilled to announce that you can now see thousands of Hirschfeld artworks online at AlHirschfeldFoundation.org. With our latest update, we have nearly 8,000 images online for visitors to see.

We have spent considerable time digitizing virtually our entire newspaper clipping collection, so there are many pieces up that viewers have not seen since the day they were first published. These clippings date back to Hirschfeld’s earliest newspaper work starting in December 1926 and going through to his last newspaper drawing in December 2002. From 1928 through 1931, there was literally not one Sunday you could open a newspaper in New York and not see a Hirschfeld drawing as they were appearing in the Times, Herald Tribune and Brooklyn Sunday Eagle.

For 75 years, on average, his work was in the Times every other week, yet this represents only half of his output in his 82-year career. Hirschfeld Foundation Archives Manager Katherine Eastman has also been digitizing a great deal of film art, TV Guide covers, album covers, and anything else that Hirschfeld artwork appeared on, and now with the biggest addition of images since we first launched the site in 2011, you can see almost all of these delightful drawings up on our site.

You can look for work in our Advanced Search by performer, production, publication, date, or genre. In our Timeline section you can see each year of Hirschfeld’s career, not only what he did, but what were the significant events in his life. You can also see work by theater season. Every month we spotlight a different work or series of works in our Spotlight section, including new finds which happen more often than you might think.

We invite you to explore the world of Hirschfeld for your own enjoyment. If you have a question regarding the availability of the work, or would like to license an image for your project, please use our Contact form. Don’t forget you can follow Al Hirschfeld on Twitter, Instagram and on Facebook, with artwork posted at least once a day.

No doubt, the image you want to see you will discover is not online yet, but trust us we are working on it. We add new works all the time, but with the biggest addition to our online image inventory.