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The
Art Set
Charlie Scheips
Last Thursday was the preview at the Museum
of Modern Art of New Photography ’05—the
first installation of the annual program (begun in
1985) since the Museum reopened this year. This was
one of several previews at the Museum including the Elizabeth
Murray retrospective and the re-installation
of MOMA’s contemporary galleries. The museum
was flooded throughout with visitors and bars were
set up on several floors for refreshments. New
Photography ’05 features four contemporary artists working in photography:
Carlos Garaicoa, Berten van Manen, Phillip
Pisciotta, and Robin Rhode from Cuba, Holland, the United States,
and South Africa respectively. What binds these very
different artists’ work is that in one way
or another are they are confronting the limitations
inherent in the photographic process. Elements of
drawing, sculpture, painting, documentation and performance
are used in an attempt to release the photograph
from its time and space limitations.
We spotted art dealer Perry Rubenstein (whose inaugural
show last year in Chelsea featured Rhode) chatting
with MOMA curator Eva Respina as well as Peter
McGill with long-time MOMA photography curator Susan
Kismarick. The show continues through January 16th 2006.
On our way out, my friend, interior decorator, Petra
Bachstein and I took a nice stroll through
the magnificent Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture
Garden—one
of this city’s great public spaces. It also,
by night, affords one a fantastic way of admiring
architect Yoshio Taniguchi’s
brilliant exterior design for the 650,000 square
foot museum. I still
haven’t warmed up to the interior spaces of
MoMA which are, in my view, too corporate and cold.
I took David Hockney for his first visit to the
Museum this past spring. He thought the color chosen for
the walls might be perhaps a bit too cool in hue
for most of the pre-contemporary collection—tending
to make even the richest Matisse or Picasso a
bit dull and seemingly smaller. However, no matter
what,
it is the modern art Mecca without rival.
Petra and
I then made our way around the corner to Rainbow
Room, 65 stories above the town, for the
French Institute Alliance Française’ Trophée
des Arts gala.
The bar was packed — overwhelming the silent auction
that was later moved to the lobby outside the dinner
for better viewing. I was introduced to Robin
Lee Navrozov. Robin, who has recently moved
back to New York after living in London and Venice
for many years,
comes from a family of collecting and connoisseurship.
Her grandparents were the great California art collectors
and art collectors Fred and Marcia Weisman. Her sister
Abigail, whom I have met before, who is an architect
here. Their father Richard Weisman was the catalyst
for Andy Warhol’s print series of famous athletes.
Her mother, Mrs. Patrick Gerschel is
a supporter of the FIAF/AF. And if that artistic family DNA
isn’t
enough, their great uncle was Norton Simon whose
eponymous museum in Pasadena, California is in my
view the greatest small museum on the West Coast.
Robin plans to return to journalism now that she
is settled in New York.
The Rainbow Room, another quintessential New York
space, was particularly beautiful last Thursday
as the city sparkled around us.
The evening was co-chaired
by Kelly Bensimon, Valesca Guerrand-Hermès,
Francine Haskell, Nathalie Kaplan (daughter
of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Gerschel), Renée
Rockefeller,
and Stanley Weisman and
raised more $350,000 dollars for the Institute.
The evening honored long time board chairman John
H.F. Haskell, Jr., with its Pilier d’Or award
for enormous contributions as well as the Trophée
des Arts to Cirque du Soleil president Daniel
Lamarre presented by Jean-David
Levitte, French Ambassador
to the United States. After the award presentations,
we were treated to an amazing performance by Olaf
Triebel a young German acrobat with one of the Cirque
du Soleil troupes scattered around the world.
Christie’s George McNeely kept the live auction
moving in style dancing about the room, microphone
in hand, more like a young swinging Frank
Sinatra than anything else.
More
than once during the evening’s presentations,
FIAF’s president Marie-Monique Steckel was
referred as the Institute’s “Iron Lady
with charm’. Introduced to her later
in the evening by Pascaline Servan-Schreiber, I
saw what they meant. She does seem to be her
own force of
nature and underscored for me the importance
of FIAF’s
re-opening of its 60th Street headquarters with a
major renovation by Voorsanger & Associates that
will feature a new “Sky Room” for
special events.
Founded in 1898 FIAF is the leading French cultural
center in the US promoting French language
and culture here as well as providing a cultural
bridge between
our two countries. I am a life-long Francophile,
with many connections to France. My own brother Ted
Scheips and his French wife Sophie and
son Pierre live
just outside Blois in the Loire. Especially since
the fallout between our countries in the past
few years, FIAF work is all the more important. Among
the crowd I spotted Vanessa von Bismarck, Bill and
Kathy Rayner, Bettina Zilkha, Debbie Bancroft, Douglas
Hannant, Daniel Benedict, William and Laura Lie Zeckendorf,
Felicia Taylor.
On our way home, Petra mentioned what a perfect New
York night it had been.
C’est vrai!
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