Three weeks ago at the Waldorf-Astoria, the United Hospital Fund held its annual gala and honored Martin D. Payson, chairman of Maimonides Medical Center, Henry “Hank” Carter, founder and CEO of Wheelchair Charities, Inc., and Howard Smith, chairman emeritus of the United Hospital Fund, for their voluntary leadership and exceptional contributions to improving health care in New York.

The black-tie event marked the opening of the Fund’s 128th fund-raising campaign on behalf of New York City’s non-profit hospitals and the Fund’s work to shape positive change in health care in New York City. Nearly 800 guests attending including trustees and CEOs of hospitals throughout the city.

Martin and Doris Payson

Mr. Payson received the Fund’s Health Care Leadership Award for his extraordinary leadership in improving the hospitals and health care of New York, particularly at Maimonides Medical Center, where he has guided a dramatic turnaround reinventing what was widely perceived as a troubled institution into a vibrant, leading clinical center. Today, Maimonides operates a renowned stroke center, Brooklyn’s first comprehensive cancer center, an accredited children’s hospital-within-a-hospital, as well as a state-of-the-art birthing center that delivers more babies than any other hospital in the state.  

Under Mr. Payson’s leadership, Maimonides has also made major investments in information technology, earning it recognition as one of the top 100 “most wired” hospitals and top 25 “most wireless” hospitals in the nation.

Previous recipients of the award include John K. Castle, chairman and CEO of Castle Harlan, Inc.; Mathilde Krim, PhD, founding chairman and chairman of the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR); John J. Mack, chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley; Sanford I. Weill, chairman emeritus of Citigroup, Inc.; Jack Rudin and the late Lewis Rudin, co-chairmen of Rudin Management Company; and Morton P. Hyman, principal of MPH Enterprises, LLC.

Henry Carter received the Fund’s Distinguished Community Service Award for his ongoing efforts to improve the quality of life of the physically challenged patients and residents at Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility, a Roosevelt Island facility that is part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and is New York’s largest long-term care and rehabilitation facility.  

Through Wheelchair Charities, Inc., the organization Mr. Carter founded in 1973, his fund-raising efforts have made possible the acquisition of 320 state-of-the-art, customized, motorized wheelchairs, giving Coler-Goldwater the single largest fleet of such power chairs in the country.  Other Wheelchair Charities-funded additions to Coler-Goldwater—from specialized vans and buses, to wound-prevention mattresses, to a greenhouse, to a computer lab—continue to have an enormous quality-of-life impact on the facility’s short- and long-term patients and residents.

Howard Smith was recognized with a Special Tribute for his enormous contributions to the Fund, its beneficiary hospitals, and the people of New York. Joining the Fund’s board in 1975 and serving as chairman from 1988 until this past June, he has consistently helped advance a strong, forward-thinking vision of health care.

The 14th Annual Hamptons International Film Festival opens tomorrow, October 18th and running through Sunday October 22, drawing a stellar range of talent including Robert Altman, Darren Aronofsky, Alec Baldwin, Ellen Burstyn, Tom Cavanaugh, Carmen Chaplin, Harry Connick Jr., Abbie Cornish, Martin Donovan, Chris Eigeman, Heather Graham, Tom Guiry, Philip Haas, Mido Hamada, Marcia Gay Harden, Don Hewitt, Ted Hope, Sandra Hueller, Famke Janssen, Melissa Leo, Damien Lewis, Ron Livingston, Connie Nielsen, Joey Pantoliano, Rosie Perez, Raoul Peck, Rachel Roy, Mercedes Ruehl, Roy Scheider, Molly Shannon, Margarethe Von Trotte, Bruce Weber.

A couple of weeks ago Andrea and John Stark feted the festival and many of its participants at their East 57th Street triplex penthouse with its sweeping city views to kick off the Festival. Among those on hand were Ann and Keith Barish, Denise and Larry Wohl, Sharyn and Stephen Mann, Patty Raynes, Debbie Bancroft as well as the festival’s director Denise Kassell and artistic director Rajendra Roy.

“The South Bronx is a hot place to be, in fact the best days for this borough are yet to be,” so proclaimed Mayor Bloomberg as he cut the ribbon on the spectacular new $19 million Bronx Museum of the Arts building, by Arquitectonica, the internationally renowned architecture firm. “This museum has always had a clear and confident vision to enjoy art and to look to the future. The new addition with its eye-popping design, has been a long time coming, 31 years, but now The Bronx Museum of the Arts has put the “grand” back in the “Grand Concourse.”

The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), at 1040 Grand Concourse at 165th Street, was founded in 1971 by a group of local residents to bring the visual arts to the Bronx. It has remained the only fine art museum in the Bronx. It is re-envisioning the role of museums in contemporary society: it addresses the changing needs of its diverse constituencies, while standing at the forefront of scholarly discourse, museum practices, and innovative public programs. Its permanent collection of more than 800 works is unique in its focus on contemporary art by artists of African, Asian, and Latin American descent as well as artists who have or have had a presence in the Bronx. The museum nearly doubles its public space with this new building, which features a major gallery, flexible events/program space, an outdoor terrace, and an entire floor dedicated to education programs and classrooms.

This event marked the opening of the museum’s second biggest show in its history -- Tropicália: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture, curated by Carlos Basualdo and Lydia Yee, is the first comprehensive exhibition exploring one of the most significant chapters in the world’s modern cultural history. It was the late 60s, when daring experiments in Brazilian art, music, film, architecture and theater converged led by such well known pop stars as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (Grammy Award winner, who along with Veloso was arrested in 1969 by the military government of Brazil anti-government activities and is now the country's Minister of Culture). The

‘Tropicália’ moment produced a counterculture that has influenced generations of artists up to the present day including David Byrne. Holly Block’s appointment marks her return to the museum, where she served as curator from 1985 to 1988, before gaining an international reputation as a director, curator and arts administrator. She served as Executive Director of Art in General, and wrote “Art Cuba: The New Generation,” a comprehensive survey on contemporary art from Cuba.

Rita Sylvester, 2003 Floor decal Variable dimensions courtesy of John Connelly Presents, New York, and Peres Projects Los Angeles / Berlin.

On the evening of the grand opening, there was a dinner in the East Side home of Brazilians Paulo, Simone and Maya Klabin for friends of the museum, especially those who had flown up from Brazil for the event including Ambassador Jose Alfredo Graça Lima Consul General of Brazil; Isabella Gil, daughter of Tropicália star Gilberto Gil; Ceaser Oiticica; Arquitectonica’s Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Paul Sheehan; Robert and Sylvie Fitzpatrick, of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, who co-organized the exhibit;

artists: Eli Sudbrack, Tim Gossens, Ricardo and Pedro Fortes (son and grandson of the legendary artist Lygia Pape), Karin Schneider and Matthew Antezzo; Michael Taylor; Okwui Enwezor; Aline Slonim; Charles Cecil; Gilberto Klein and Cristiana George; Artnews’ Robin Cembalest; Philippa Feigen Malkin; Alessaandra Clark; Adrian Dannatt; The Andy Warhol Foundations’s Yona Backer; Ethan Sklar and Emilio Kalil, the Director of Gabinete Cultura, Sao Paulo.

The Klabin’s exquistely appointed townhouse is filled with art from ancient Egyptian to cutting edge contemporary. Caipirinhas (Brazilian cocktails made with Cachaça, lime and sugar) were served on the second floor and dinner was served on the ground floor where guests spread out through the library into a tent built over the garden terrace for the evening. Simone served classic Brazilian delights including Muqueca (chicken with coconut milk), Quibebe (pumpkin and shredded beef) and Romeo and Juliet (guava paste and cheese) for dessert. ¡Maravilhoso!

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