The Art Set
Charlie Scheips

Design for Living

On Tuesday night, I went over to the Cooper-Hewitt, our national design museum housed at Andrew Carnegie’s mansion at 91st and Fifth Avenue, for the National Design Awards Gala. It’s the fifth year for the awards having been launched originally as part of the White House Millennium Council in 2000. The council was a product of the Clinton years though, and First Lady Laura Bush was a no-show despite being identified as the evening’s honorary chair. Given the muffled grumblings amidst the 500 plus crowd during dinner, I don’t think she was terribly missed.

The Cooper-Hewitt had been having some identity problems of its own in recent years but thanks to a re-energized board and arrival in 2001 of director Paul Warwick Thompson (formerly of the London’s Design Museum), not to mention some must-see exhibitions of late, it seems to be getting back on track. Last month, the Museum opened its thought-provoking Art Design: Functional Objects from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread (through February 27, 2005). Curated by the Museum’s curatorial director Barbara J. Bloemink and independent curator Joseph Cunningham, the show features work by 18 well-known contemporary artist that blur distinctions between the aesthetics of the art world and the functional mandates of design.

As the show’s curators point out, the symbol intentionally underscores that art and design, while “not equal to” one another are nevertheless, “not greater or less than” the other — at least that is the show’s point of view.

Some people in the design world muttered the question to me, that with all the art museums in the City why does the only design museum need to be taken over by the art establishment? While they’ve got a point, I think this show, no matter how one feels, is attracting new audiences from wider spectrums and after all, isn’t that what every artistic institution wants today—wider perspectives?

What all of these artists share is an interest in raw materials used in simplified, albeit, sometimes elegant ways that blatantly reveal, rather than disguise, both function and the artist’s aesthetic stance. Early antecedents and influences include the clean lines and material honesty that pervade the Shaker aesthetic of the 18th and 19th century utopian movement. Some of the later additions in the show seem a long stretch to my eye but why don’t you go see the show and make up you own mind.

Spring Street Night Exterior. Art/Work©Judd Foundation. Licensed by VAGA, NYC 2004. Photo courtesy: Rainer Judd/Zing Magazine.

Donald Judd, who died in 1994, left an enormous aesthetic legacy to us in the form of two major permanent sites that he created for the viewing and appreciation his work. Judd also collected in depth the work of other artists that are on view including Dan Flavin, John Chamberlain, and Claes Oldenburg (to name a few.) In New York, it is the artist’s SoHo cast-iron building on Spring Street. The Judd Foundation is currently raising money for the restoration of the building. The other, outside of Marfa, Texas, an enormous installation of his and others’ work — preserved in the series of buildings that was once a United State military base. Marfa is one of the most important artistic pilgrimages for anyone interested in contemporary art today.

I first came to know Judd’s daughter Rainer, president of the Judd Foundation board, a couple years ago when I had the enviable opportunity of touring 101 Spring Street thanks to Judd Furniture director Madeleine Hoffmann. Rainer is an imaginative conservator and tireless supporter of her father’s work and legacy — supervising exhibitions around the world including the major Judd retrospective that opened at the Tate Modern earlier this year and is currently on an international tour which sadly does not include the US. There is concurrently a handsome Judd survey show that opened last week at PaceWildenstein’s 25th Street Gallery in Chelsea (also featuring new paintings by Robert Mangold.)

Rainer was the first person I spotted at the Design Awards gala — she was wearing an elegant black and white gown from Celine’s Fall ’04 collection — while we checked our rain gear in the long tented entrance, stretching over half of 91st street, in front of the Museum. I also ran into MoMA’s chief of Library and Archives Milan Hughston with contemporary design rep Dennis Miller, as we walked past the gauntlet of paparazzi (we didn’t warrant a picture, I’m afraid) and entered the cocktail reception in the tented courtyard of the museum.

	Harry Allen's Candlestick

Here, the gala’s chairman architect Richard Meier, and vice-chairmen Beth Rudin DeWoody, Reed Krakoff, design guru (and to many the surprisingly entertaining emcee of the evenings’ awards’ ceremony) Murray Moss, and Deedie Rose greeted the arriving guests.

The Smithsonian Institution is the parent of the Cooper-Hewitt and its secretary Lawrence M. Small was there as well as all of the award nominees. Soon the tent was packed with leading designers, patrons, and promoters of the design world. I saw designer Harry Allen, who has had a lot of attention of late for various projects including the witty plastic candlestick he designed from his grandmothers’ original silver one. Harry introduced me to the beauty company Aveda’s Chris Hacker there to accept the National Design Award for Corporate Leadership presented by architect Maya Lin later that night.

The great Los Angeles art patron Eli Broad was there with his wife Edythe. I got to know the Broads during the 1980s when the ever-supportive Eli was the chairman of the contemporary art fair I organized there. I also eyed patrons Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Katie Ford, Vogue’s Billy Norwich, Kitty Hawks, IMG’s Fern Mallis, Town & Country’s Pamela Fiori, W’s James Reginato, architect Ali Tayar and hotelier Andre Balacz as the New York Times’ Bill Cunningham stealthily maneuvered his way through the crowd capturing, as usual, only those that interested his discerning eye — the best of which I am sure we will undoubtedly see in this Sunday’s Style section.

Rainer Judd

While we were being ushered into dinner, I took a look at the Museum’s newly re-designed gift shop with Joanne Cassullo and interior decorator Randy Beale of Beale-Lana Interior Design. The shop is the newest destination for the best in contemporary design — that is uptown when you can’t make it down to the place that started it all — Moss in SoHo. Entering the dinner tent I caught up with truly legendary decorator Albert Hadley who for decades has given form to the idea that the contemporary and the classic could coincide in our living spaces.

I sat at one of Beth De Woody’s tables with Princess Jeet Nabha Khemka and her husband Nand Khemka, Barbara de Portago, real estate developer, Gene Sisco, Holly Newman, Claudia Glenn Barasch and Tom Cashin. Beth’s other table found her brother Billy Rudin and Beth’s good friend Howard Blum hosting Jay Johnson, Joyce Storm, Wendy Goldberg, Shelden Hirshon, Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and Randall Beale.

After introductions from director Paul Thompson and a welcome from Lawrence Small, the festivities were turned over to Murray Moss who most agreed is the design world’s answer to Billy Crystal as far as emceeing goes. We were also treated to a charming video by entitled
design = ?, conceived by Cooper-Hewitt curator Ellen Lupton with video animation by Maryland Institute College of Art student Nadra Kebaili. You can see it for yourself at: http://www.chiwi.com/nda/

Email
A
Friend