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.
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.
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