The New Museum Spring Gala

On Wednesday night, an artsy, colorful crowd that included Jeff Koons, Rashid Johnson, Cindy Sherman, and Rachel Feinstein and John Currin, gathered at Cipriani Wall Street, around an ornate, giant blue butt plug. Other guests included artists Frank Stella, William Wegman, Paul Chan, and George Condo, as well as It-Girls Lauren Santo Domingo and Fabiola Beracasa-Beckman. It was a work donated for auction by artist Paul McCarthy for the New Museum’s Spring Gala. The evening hosted by New Museum Toby Devan Lewis Director Lisa Phillips and gala chairs Shelley Fox Aarons, Mitzi Eisenberg, Susan Feinstein, and Charlotte Feng Ford honored art writers, and couple, Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian.

Few couples are better acquainted with the topic of art, and few writers are better ingrained in the world which they cover. “The best thing about being profiled by Tad Tomkins for The New Yorker is that you get to be friends with Dodie and Tad for the rest of your life” said Laurie Simmons, in a video that played soon after David Remnick, Francisco Costa, Vogue’s Chloe Malle, David Schwimmer and Zoë Buckman, and Yvonne Force Villareal had their burrata appetizers. “Dodie, I love the piece you did on me in 1990 when you got Karl Lagerfeld to come to Venice to photograph me,” added Jeff Koons. “Y’all are therapists,” said Ryan Trecartin.

The pair met in the late eighties; as a first date, Tomkins brought Kazanjian to Andy Warhol’s funeral. The former has written more than twelve books, including Duchamp: A Biography, and has profiled a list of artists for The New Yorker that “reads like a history of art of the 20th and 21th century,” said the New Museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni. And their memories reflect that. They told of dinner with Marcel Duchamp and drinks with Koons. They have stories of Warhol being vulgar and of Cy Twombly losing his cool. “One thing we have in common,” Robert Rauschenberg once told Tomkins, “We will always be younger than our children.” Not many people have sound bites like these.

As the evening moved to the main course, famed auctioneer Simon de Pury took to the stage, and then the floor, convincing the likes of Feng Ford and Aby Rosen to invest in works by Mary Heilmann, Ed Ruscha, and of course, the aforementioned McCarthy (“Don’t dwell on the title,” de Pury claimed he’d been instructed), to help the New Museum surpass its $2,000,000 goal. By the time the after-dinner entertainment, Chairlift, took the stage, the museum had done just that thanks to a city that supports art, singular artists, and one giant blue butt plug.