A Sense of Creative Time-ing

As befitting an organization so named, Creative Time threw itself a quirky celebration in honor of its 33rd birthday. The event at the Bowery Hotel raised nearly $700,000, which will help support such public art projects as Doug Aitken’s “Sleepwalkers,” the projections seen at the Museum of Modern Art this winter.

As that project demonstrated, public art helps build new audiences for art. In the first month of “Sleepwalkers,” 33,000 people visited, with more than 10% saying they had never been inside the Museum of Modern Art before.

The organization, led by Anne Pasternak, counts many New York artists as staunch supporters. Among those attending the birthday party were Marilyn Minter, Cindy Sherman, Will Cotton, Todd Eberle, and Vic Muniz.

Others who attended may be easy to spot: there was much joy over the Jack Spade tote bag distributed to guests. The tote shows an image of a plane flying over New York trailing a banner, “Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise.” The image is from the 2004 Creative Time project by artist Jenny Holzer, “For New York City: Planes and Projections.”

Jazz, Kind of Branded

Corporate support of benefits is often acknowledged at speech time and quickly forgotten. This was not the case at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s benefit on Monday night.

Guests arriving at the Time Warner Center saw a Cadillac parked out front and another one parked inside Jazz at Lincoln Center’s home. Cadillac was a lead corporate sponsor of the event.

Before the concert, guests also had time to sample Grolsch beer provided by another corporate sponsor, Anheuser-Busch Companies. The beer was served at bars made entirely of ice.

The sponsors also received acknowledgment from the special performers brought in for the concert. Actor Kevin Spacey thanked Tony Ponturo of Anheuser-Busch for his support.

“I don’t know how you get the work done, you’re always out being philanthropic,” Mr. Spacey said.

The other corporate sponsor of the event was Time Warner, whose support stocked the event’s goody bags with CDs and DVDs.

The most impressive element of the event was, of course, the music. Wynton Marsalis and his septet performed with Mr. Spacey; Derek Trucks and his wife, Susan Tedeschi; Barbara Cook; Jimmy Buffett, and Lenny Kravitz. At supper, Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers lured people onto the dance floor.

Public relations executive Ashley Schiff was chairwoman of the event, which raised $1.45 million.