The Kitchen Collection was a part of the Jean-Noel Herlin Archive Project, which is replete with important and rare documents. Herlin, who was an antiquarian bookseller in the 1970s, began in 1973 to acquire exhibition invitations/announcements and poster/mailers on painting, sculpture, drawing and prints, performance, and video. He was motivated by the quasi-neglect in which these ephemeral primary sources in art history were held by American commercial channels. The Kitchen has been an active alternative art space in New York beginning in the early 70s. Existing documentation of New York City's influential alternative art culture of the 1970s and 1980s is ephemeral. Many alternative initiatives are spontaneous, time-based, or anti-institutional and documentation is frequently meager. The Kitchen Collection is unique because of the variety of items in many different art forms and from many different artists that Jean-Noel Herlin had the foresight to save and that others might not have valued. The collection, which dates from the early 1970s to 2009, includes press releases, calendars, posters, booklets, announcement cards, invitations, press releases, catalogs, publications, postcards, newspaper articles, all reflecting the many artists associated with The Kitchen and the novel events and sessions that were held there. This is an Alternative Traditions in Art collection.