About those faces in the crowd at three different events on Wednesday night: The funniest ones were on the wall of a new exhibit at the Jewish Museum, in cartoons and illustrations by artist and children’s book author William Steig. The museum’s new leadership, chairman Joshua Nash, and president, Robert Pruzan, said “From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig” is appealing to an important audience: young families.

Mr. Pruzan and Mr. Nash joined about 120 other guests to honor the founder of Tiger Management, Julian Robertson.

“It’s more fun to give than to receive,” Mr. Robertson, a golf resort owner and major Central Park Conservancy donor, told The New York Sun before receiving his Bridges to Understanding Award.

Downtown at 7 World Trade Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Next Wave Festival. The event honored the former chief of Philip Morris, Hamish Maxwell, whose company — now Altria — has supported the festival since its inception.

Theater director David Chambers and some others spent dinner discussing whether Peter Gelb of the Met and Gérard Mortier of New York City Opera will pose a challenge to BAM. “The answer is no,” Mr. Chambers said, “BAM is and will always be a unique place on the New York artistic landscape.”

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is the BAM of the Berkshires, a fact in evidence at the museum’s gala on the Lower East Side. BAM stalwarts, such as Neil Chrisman, Laurie Anderson, and Lou Reed, were all in attendance.

Hans Morris, and his wife Kate, spent their evening as chairmen of the gala saying hello and goodbye. The Morrises are set to relocate to San Francisco for Mr. Morris’s new post as president of Visa Inc.

But geography doesn’t seem to stop anyone from supporting this “small, creative, fearless, and nurturing museum” in North Adams, Mass., as Mr. Morris described it. Entrepreneur Bo Peabody brought his catering company Mezze to New York from Williamstown to dish out dinner for 300 guests at the Angel Orensanz Foundation.

The director of MASS MoCA, Joseph Thompson, reported that fund-raising for the museum’s endowment is going at a “rather startling clip” and thanked several artists for advice about the museum’s dispute with Swiss artist Christoph Büchel. That episode is resolved, which means the museum can go back to doing what it does best: supporting artists.

Next weekend an exhibit of Jenny Holzer’s work, “Projections,” opens.

agordon@nysun.com