A Dog Show “Flaneur” Strolls Through Westminster 2024

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194 – July, 2024

By Sarah Montague

Westminster began as a competition among gentlemen of the 19th century.

Here’s the playful account of its beginnings from the American Kennel Club website:

Around 1876, a group of “sporting gentlemen” would gather at the bar of the Westminster Hotel in New York City to talk about hunting and boast about their hunting dogs. One thing led to another, and the group decided it needed a real venue to compare hounds–a dog show in Manhattan. In 1877, they named themselves the Westminster Kennel Club, after their favorite bar, and hosted the First Annual New York Bench Show of Dogs. It was held at a venue, Gilmore’s Garden, that would later come to be known as Madison Square Garden.

The show has evolved beyond this elegant, but somewhat narrow, focus, but it retains much of its sense of class and historical resonance.

I am using this aspect of the show to frame the theme of my report this year. The same era that saw the start of the Westminster Kennel Club also produced a Parisian sub-culture–that of the “flaneur.”

Click here to read the complete article
194 – July, 2024

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Posted by AnthonyA on Jul 18 2024. 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.