Home Again – Westminster Is Back Where It Belongs

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322 – The Annual, 2024-25

By Sarah Montague

Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show President Don Sturz is a happy man. It might be that when I dropped in (via Zoom) he was at home, with his three dogs snoozing around him, but it might be because, against the odds, he (and, he would say, his very able team) brought Westminster back to Manhattan.

Westminster has been in a kind of exile since 2020, when the pandemic forced the show to seek safe, outdoor spaces in which to relocate. But Sturz notes the dislocation really started earlier when reconstruction at Madison Square Garden forced the show to move the daytime breed judging to Piers 92 and 94 at 50th street. It was a short-lived experiment. Pier 92 collapsed and Pier 94, a challenging space connected inside by metal staircases, is now being remodeled into a smaller event destination.

The pandemic took the show to the Lyndhurst Estate at Tarrytown for two years, and for the last two to the Billy Jean King Tennis Center in Queens. Neither could be considered “wilderness,” nevertheless there a sense of fable here—the “hero” coming home after a period of exile.

“Westminster has always been associated with “the Garden,” Sturz notes–first Gilmore’s Garden (site of the first show in 1877), and then Madison Square Garden for many years.

Click here to read the complete article
322 – The Annual, 2024-25

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jan 8 2025. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.