One of Paloma Picasso’s signature motifs in the jewelry she designs for Tiffany & Company is “love and kisses” – a series of energetic X’s and O’s in silver and gold, on brooches and pendants.

True to her designs, it appears that Ms. Picasso is quite affectionate in the flesh. At the party Tiffany & Company held Thursday to celebrate her 25th year designing for the company, Ms. Picasso exchanged smackaroos with Patricia Hearst, Barbara de Portago, Robert Colacello, Patricia Cisneros, and Jamee Gregory. And those are just a few of the well-heeled folks who fawned over her at the entrance to the Museum of Modern Art restaurant, the Modern.

Ms. Picasso does have one special person in her life, her husband, Eric Thevenet. The couple, who live in Switzerland, seem very much in love, staying close the entire party.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Thevenet rarely gives his wife jewelry – she’s got plenty. The daughter of Pablo Picasso and Francoise Gilot has enough art, too.

“He goes the opposite direction – he gives the heaviest gifts,” Ms. Picasso said.

For example: a plane propeller, made of wood, and a meteorite.

“He always finds incredible things,” Ms. Picasso said.

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The student center at Columbia University, Lerner Hall, is pretty spiffy – spiffy enough to host a champagne reception for dancers of the New York City Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet, after their performance at the Miller Theatre on October 2.

Those staples of student parties – pizza, subs, nachos – were nowhere in sight. Instead, waiters passed around sushi, shrimp, and crab cakes. And forget the keg: Guests sipped wines from the Napa Valley winery Clos Du Val. Columbia didn’t squander funds here. Arts patron Judith Lipsey footed the bill, as she has for all of the Miller Theatre’s opening night celebrations, starting in 1988.

Another patron of the evening was Mary Sharp Cronson, who produces the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim’s Peter B. Lewis Theater.

The dance program – three works by the New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon, set to the music of Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti – was a rare opportunity for the dancers of the two companies to work together.

Jane Murdock came from Salt Lake City to see her daughter, Rachel Viselli, a member of the San Francisco Ballet, perform.

“I put her in ballet shoes because I was kind of a lazy, fat kid, and that was such a drag. I didn’t want my daughter to deal with that,” Ms. Murdock said. “I knew that ballet makes a very strong, lovely body.”

Family figured prominently at the event. Ms. Lipsey came with her granddaughter, Elizabeth Kehler. A Columbia professor and economist, Marc Giannoni, who studies optimal inflation-targeting, brought along his wife, Gil, and two children, Nora and Eliot.

Other guests included the architect of the renovations and additions to Columbia’s Uris Hall, Belmont Freeman; the chief executive officer of Photoshelter, Allen Murabayashi, who sang in the Whiffenpoofs with the Miller Theatre’s executive director, George Steel, and graphic designer and artist Alex Coulter, who is at work on a series of watercolors at his studio in the Hamptons.

agordon@nysun.com