Showtime

The weekend before the Gala there were no end of details that needed attention.  Seating arrangements were changing every ten minutes.  This one had an unexpected guest; this one had two cancellations; an A-list artist is now coming.  Working from a magnetic board, tables were shuffled around the room like chess pieces as we desperately searched for good placement for all of the top-tier table buyers.  How bad is it when you've sold 15 $75,000 tables and there are only 6 really great spots in the room?

The caterers, upon seeing the makeshift kitchen area on the gala floor, announced that there was not enough space to serve both the first and second courses from the kitchen so they needed to pre-set the appetizer.  Our Gala Co-Chairs were not happy.

Artist Casey Reas, who designed the digital visuals for the Gala arrived from L.A. to do some hands-on adjusting and see what the work actually looked like in the large gallery where the dinner would be held.  Ten computers were set up behind a draped half-wall from which he could see and manipulate the visuals, change speed and colors and order of what appeared on the screens hanging from 16 different points on the ceiling. After months of reading descriptions and listening to explanations, we were finally going to see the end product, the art work that would embody the New Media theme.   Our A/V consultants were on hand installing projectors, operating the controls and standing by for further instructions.  

The Co-Chairs and other Development staff showed up to take a look at the table placement.  They were underwhelmed by the artwork, which, admittedly, looked a little dim in a room of undressed tables, no chairs, no lighting and gray walls.  Momentary panic set in; it was too late to do anything but try to convince everyone to withhold judgment until the bride was dressed, coiffed, and walking down the aisle, bouquet in hand!  We needed to focus on more important things - like which table were we going to place behind a column with partial view of the stage.   At a minimum of $5000 a ticket, no one was going to be happy with that seating.

Calls were coming in from people who desperately wanted tickets to the Studio Party, the 9pm bash for the younger crowd that would start in the museum's lower level while the dinner guests were enjoying their main course.  With limited capacity and the sponsors hankering for more comps, it became necessary to add to the growing waitlist of people who would be contacted when/if tickets became available. 

It was becoming frustrating trying to find places to seat the select members of the press who had been invited to the dinner.  All perfectly respectable journalists,  but no one seemed to want one at their table, feeling, I suppose, that it would restrict the conversation, or worse, lead to embarassing exposure in who knows what media outlet.  Doesn't anyone just want publicity anymore?  I thought it would be a cinch to find a spot for an intelligent, attractive, sophisticated journalist writing for a swank French magazine, but it was like trying to find someone to take your ugly sister to the prom.  

We had reached our financial goals, but now we had to deliver an event worthy of a world-class museum and a guest list of A-list collectors, distinguished artists, art, fashion and entertainment world celebrities and generous sponsors eager to see the return on their investment.  All that was left now was to put on the show.  This is what keeps event planners up at night...thinking about the one million and one moving parts of an event and the ever present possibility of one or more of those parts not functioning or going haywire. 

Thursday, October 20, 2010

A fabulous soiree took place on October 20th at Casa Lever, the swank New York eatery located in Park Avenue's Lever House.  Co-hosted by the Whitney's Director, Adam Weinberg, and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, the event was another run-up to the Gala as well as the clincher to the Whitney/AOL relationship.  Chuck Close, Doug Starn, Tom Sachs, Gregory Crewdson, Pytor Uklanski, Christo and Andres Serrano were some of the artists who spent the cocktail hour mingling with journalists from Vogue, Artforum, Vanity Fair, Bloomberg News and the Village Voice, among others, while boldface names like Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis and Lola Schnabel provided variety and spice to the guest list.  Sometimes it seemed like the press outnumbered the artists, but who was counting?

Armstrong provided sound bytes to inquiring reporters, while gallerinas strutted around on 5-inch heels posing for eager photographers. The colorful restaurant, which resembles a kind of elegant space capsule, is adorned with giant blowups of Andy Warhol celebrity portraits, making it an appropriate backdrop for the art/technology hookup. 

Guests were having so much fun at the bar that getting them seated took some work.  Adam welcomed everyone and thanked AOL for supporting the Gala and the Whitney.  Tim, in turn, thanked Adam as well as a host of AOL staff and "partners" that were present - Chuck, for one, who is the face of AOL's Project on Creativity, and Andy Spade for another, whose marketing company, Partners and Spade, is providing creative branding for AOL.  Once the speeches were over,  guests dug into the shaved artichoke salad and short ribs, and panna cotta for dessert.

Would this event help sell Gala tickets?  Maybe.  Would it create buzz?  Probably.  Would it generate press?  Absolutely.

Road to the Gala

New  York was one big traffic jam Thursday night.  The U.N. General Assembly was in session, President Obama was in town and attending a dinner at the Museum of Natural History, a new exhibition opened at the Gagosian Gallery, events were taking place up and down Madison Avenue, and beautiful New Yorkers were doing the Madison Avenue stroll, stopping anyplace where a party was happening and barging in.

A Gala is not just one big blowout event. Sometimes there are launch parties, kickoffs, sponsor events. For ten months now I have been planning the Museum's largest annual fundraising event - the 2010 Whitney Fall Gala - and we're now a month away from the big night.  In future posts leading up to October 26th I'll go into detail  about the  swirl of activity that precedes the main event. Working with two co-chairs and a germ of an idea - New Media - the Gala has already raised more than $2 million in ticket and table sales and now has not one but two sponsors - AOL - a company in perfect sync with our theme; and Akris, the Swiss luxury clothing line of impeccable design and craftsmanship - a company in perfect sync with our donors, and the site of Thursday night's party.

Seventy or so guests were invited to help launch this year's Gala with champagne, hors d'oeuvres and an up close and personal view of the current Akris collection.  The Madison Avenue Akris boutique is pristine, all creamy beige and blonde wood, punctuated with faceless, hairless white mannequins dressed in fabrics so luxe you can hardly restrain yourself from running your fingers along a jacket sleeve or playing with the glossy detail on a cocktail dress.  In order to remind everyone what they were there to celebrate, we installed the work of media artist Marina Zurkow on a plasma screen in the store's window.  The colorful animation of  the video, entitled "Slurb", was in direct contrast to the dark subject matter, namely the deterioration and destruction of our natural resources and its effect on the population.  This did not seem to faze the two young children whose noses were pressed up against the window for 20 minutes, clearly captivated.  While the house photographer scurried outside to capture the moment, our artist was not impressed.  "They're cartoon whores," she said.  


Inside, guests ogled the elegant clothing and posed for a Vogue photographer who had been dispatched to cover the event.  Two doors down, the brand new Reed Krakoff store was celebrating their opening and their sponsorship of an exhibition o- the wardrobes of famous New York Women at the Museum of the City of New York.  It was a noisy, jam packed affair and everyone looked like they were on their way to some fabulous event.  This was cocktails, after all.  There was still dinner to be had somewhere!


Eventually, the other parties down Madison Avenue broke up and the uninvited started wandering into our soiree.  A quartet of twenty-somethings filed in like mannequins on the runway, walked to the end of the shop turned and walked right out.  Clearly this was not their milieu, and they made not even a pretense of interest.  Nor did anyone encourage them to linger.  Only in New York.


Behind the scenes, orchestrating the display for the store window was an ordeal.  On about a weeks' notice I needed to find an artist who was willing to have their work in a store window for one night, someone who was either in the Whitney collection or had participated in an exhibition, group or solo, at the Whitney.  Someone we could make a phone call to.  I enlisted the help of our curator of New Media, who suggested Marina and was willing to contact her via email.  Luckily she was game, but did not have a DVD of her piece to send us, only a pre-loaded Mac mini. I arranged to personally meet her at NYU where she teaches and pick up the Mac. 


Happily, our Film and Video technicians informed me that we had a 46" plasma screen on the premises that could be hauled over to the Akris store, five blocks south.  The stand, however, was stored at the Museum's art warehouse in Chelsea.  I ordered a van to pick up the stand the morning of the event and deliver it to the Akris store.  We had an hour or so before the store opened to assemble the stand, place the screen and get the video up and runnning.


Experienced technicians though they were, putting the stand together was a messy job and the pristine Akris store was strewn with boxes, hardware and styrofoam.  The screen was heavy to lift, the window was shallow in depth and the guys kept bumping up against the mannequin dressed in a $5000 jacket.  The electrical cord was visible, marring the cool spare look of the window .The Akris team was brainstorming about how to disguise the metal stand, finally deciding to fabricate a black box  to fit around it.  When the quickly assembled box arrived later in the day it looked awful and was immediately scrapped.  So in the end, the cord showed and the stand stood uncovered and no one really cared because the video looked fabulous.  And the artist was happy; and the sponsors were happy and people bought clothes.

The Fun Begins

 

The Capital Campaign for the Whitney of the Future got off to a rousing start Thursday    night on the 18th floor of the Standard Hotel in the Meatpacking District!  Several years of building design, fundraising and rallying the Whitney board to give the green light to a new building on the Highline had brought us to this momentous occasion and we were ready to celebrate!

But things did not look promising a half an hour before guests began to arrive.  Flashes of lightning were gorgeous but ominous.  At 5:30pm, from the floor to ceiling windows of the high-gloss lounge formerly known as the "Boom Boom Room", we watched an enormous black cloud threaten to put a literal damper on a milestone event that had been months in the planning.  Rolling in from the direction of Hoboken, it eventually burst, obliterating the view of lower New York that minutes before had sat so majestically before us.  The outline of the new Whitney site, beautifully lit with neon tubing to make the footprint clearly visible from this elegant aerie, could hardly be seen through the pounding rain.  It was a deluge, a tornado-like storm that is rarely seen in these parts.  Panic set in.   Would anybody show up?  Would hundreds of bottles of Moet go unpopped?

Never underestimate the determination of intrepid New Yorkers to be part of a major art world event!  After all, what were taxis, limousines and Escalades made for but to deliver celebrants to their destination regardless of the weather?  Almost simultaneously, as the guests started tricklling in, the sky began to clear, timing that seemed to say "Only kidding folks.  Have a great party."  And a great party is what they had.

There were speeches by Kate Levin, New York City's cultural commissioner, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, as well as by the Whitney's Director, Adam Weinberg, Board Co-Chairman Brooke Garber Neidich, and Board President Neil Bluhm.  Artist Barbara Kruger, whose installation on part of the new Whitney site was visible during the reception, also addressed the audience, embodying the important role that the Whitney plays as the "Artists Museum".

In the "pool room" across the floor (a room that usually, unsurprisingly, contains a pool, covered over for the evening) a performance of Christian Marclay's "Pret-a-Porter" took place.  A rack of clothes with musical notations on them were being put on and taken off by a cast of performers accompanied by musicians improvising on the notes on the clothing.  Daring, disonant, wholly contemporary.  A hint of what's to come at the new Whitney.

The rooftop of the Standard, replete with full bar, waterbeds, hottubs, conversation nooks and high-powered binoculors, as well as a vending machine offering binkinis and sunglasses, was open;  but the rain-soaked astroturf kept all but the most adventurous guests  - and those with frizz proof hair - on the floor below.  Artists, collectors, curators, art world luminaries and government officials sipped champagne, nibbled on crab cakes, truffled grilled cheese mini-sandwiches, and vegetable spring rolls, lingered over the model of the new Whitney's Renzo Piano-designed  building and watched a fly-through on plasma screens scattered throughout the floor, made small talk and big talk, and generally reveled in being part of this incredible moment.

Backstage, we had rented ipads for the first time to simplify check-in.  A Whitney colleague, furnished with a head-set to facilitate communication with the front door, said she felt like she should be taking orders at Burger King!  The event ended at 9.  The screens, podium and performance area needed to be broken down and the lounge converted and re-set to open again at 11.  With only one small freight elevator, the task was a bit daunting.  But we thrive on challenges (NOT), or rather, they are always there, so we grin and bear it and plow ahead.

Our first major event of the season was a grand success, despite the storm.  One down, many, many more to go.