Out & About
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Looking out the windows of the Rainbow Room last week, I saw New York City as a vast stretch of lights and color.
But my New York is in the details. So I navigated my way into the swell of 300 guests at the annual gala of the Hispanic Society of America, the 101-year-old institution on Audubon Terrace with a trove of Spanish and Latin American art and literature – Goyas, El Grecos, and first editions of “Don Quixote.”
The conversation was in Spanish. One woman seemed straight out of a Botero painting, another dressed in the image of Frida Kahlo. They danced to Bob Hardwick’s orchestra and clapped for the honorees: the chair man of Grupo Prisa, which owns El Pais, Jesus de Polanco, and the Mexican banker Roberto Hernandez and his wife, Claudia. The executive director of the society, Mitchell Codding, and the chairman of the society’s board, George Moore, handed them medals in green velvet boxes.
Among the crowd were billionaire George Soros; Spanish businessman Placido Arango; the chief executive of Goldman Sachs Henry Paulsen Jr., who dined with Patricia and Gustavo Cisneros and Jaime Yordan; the chief executive of Citigroup Latin America and Mexico, Manuel Medina-Mora, and the chief executive of Grupo Televisa, Emilio Azcarraga, who dined in the same seat he had in May when El Museo del Barrio honored him.
The event raised $750,000 for the society, which is exploring a move to a more central location from its beaux arts home in Upper Manhattan.
