Out & About

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The New York Sun

The Studio Museum in Harlem gala on Monday was a party for everyone — a significant distinction in the overcrowded and fractured world of New York fund-raising parties, and a display of the support for the museum’s mission to support black artists.

There were leaders from publishing and broadcasting (Donald Newhouse, Charlie Rose), real estate (Roland Betts, Tom Bernstein, William Rudin), entertainment (Russell Simmons, Spike Lee, Debra Lee), and finance (Stan O’Neal, Christopher Williams, Donald Marron). There were writers (Bob Colacello. Hilton Als), museum directors (Lisa Dennison, Adam Weinberg), art dealers (Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Perry Rubenstein), celebrities (Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, Tim Gunn), established artists (Fred Wilson, Chris Ofili) and emerging ones (the museum’s artists in residence, Titus Kaphar and Wardell Milan).

In just a few years, the party has boosted the social cachet of the museum. As expectations have increased, so has the responsibility of the event’s chairwomen, Kathryn Chenault, Joyce Jackson Haupt, and Carol Sutton Lewis. This year, they pulled off a change in venue to accommodate increased demand. Some missed the modern vibe of the Metropolitan Pavilion, but the grandeur of the new venue, Cipriani Wall Street, complemented the elegance of the guests.

The risk of the party’s success is that it generates more buzz than the work on display at the museum. That may be a good problem to have. The director of the museum, Thelma Golden, and the chief curator, Christine Kim, seem ready to tackle any problem.

Two award presentations put the spotlight on the substantive work of the museum. Lorna Simpson received the museum’s first Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize. It carries a $50,000 unrestricted gift, funded by Wein’s widower, the jazz festival impresario George Wein. He and his wife were major collectors of black art, and introduced many others to collecting at parties in their home.

“My wife was on the board for many years, and the museum was always close to us,” Mr. Wein said. “I think what this can do is give people here the idea that they can do the same.”

Ms. Golden described Mr. Wein’s wife as a “woman of uncommon grace and intellect with a passion for art.”

The event also honored a longtime trustee, Gordon Davis, drawing attention to the crucial work completed by the museum’s board through the years.

“He is well dressed — at least in his own mind,” the chairman of the museum, Raymond McGuire, said of the honoree, a former parks commissioner who helped found Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Central Park Conservancy. ” He is a nonconformist, a sophisticated and extremely effective rebel” who drops into meetings, “giving answers like an oracle, questioning, pontificating, and then disappearing.”

Mr. Davis took his turn at the podium to acknowledge government officials who have supported the museum, including the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, Kate Levin, and state senator David Paterson, Eliot Spitzer’s running mate. “David, we cannot wait til November 7,” Mr. Davis said.

And then Mr. Davis disappeared into the crowd of a thousand guests, who took to the dance floor. The event raised $1.6 million.


The New York Sun

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