Out & About
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Getting a Movado On At Mostly Mozart Gala
At the dinner at Avery Fisher Hall before the opening concert of the Mostly Mozart Festival, the spotlight shone on the chief executive of Movado, Efraim Grinberg.
“Can you imagine how wonderful New York City would be if every chief executive was such a generous patron of the arts, like Efraim?” the chairman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Frank Bennack, a former chief executive of the Hearst Corporation who is now its chairman, said. “Fortunately, we are lucky to have a lot of them.”
Mr. Grinberg, who is on the board of Lincoln Center and whose company has been a sponsor of many programs on the performing arts center’s campus, explained the literal connection between his business and the arts.
“In Esperanto, ‘movado’ means ‘always in motion.’ That describes us and it describes all the arts: dancing, painting,” Mr. Grinberg said. “The arts can be a great partner for business.”
One person at the event who seems to be always in motion these days is the board member leading the $702 million fund-raising campaign for redevelopment at Lincoln Center, David Rubenstein, who is a co-founder and managing director of the Carlyle Group.
“We can’t stop until we raise all the money. We’re almost done,” Mr. Rubenstein said.
Others at the gala with agendas full of Lincoln Center to-dos were the architect Elizabeth Diller, in charge of the center’s physical redevelopment, and the director of the Mostly Mozart Festival, Louis Langrée, who will get little sleep between now and August 25, when the festival closes.
The crowd included Mozart lovers of all stripes. “I love it all,” Mr. Rubenstein said when asked his favorite piece by Mozart.
A board member of the New York Hall of Science had a very specific answer: “The last “Requiem,” when I heard it done in the dome of Salzburg Cathedral with the organ, which is stupendous. It filled the nave and the duomo magnificently,” Anthony Viscusi said.
The publisher of Crain’s New York, Alair Townsend, also cited the “Requiem,” adding her second favorite: Mozart’s horn concertos.
The event, attended by more than 400 guests, raised $1.2 million.
