The New York Center for Children (NYCC) held its Annual Bowling Ball on Wednesday, November 17th at Bowlero in Chelsea Piers. Hosted by NYCC’s Board of Directors and Junior Board, the event honored New York City’s Essential Workers for their outstanding dedication and service throughout the pandemic. Guests enjoyed an evening of bowling and fun to raise funds for NYCC’s services to help children heal from abuse. The event raised almost $25,000 in support of NYCC’s vital mission.
Notable attendees included Board members Christine Rales, Amy Bluestone, Lauren Vernon, Barbara Harrison, and Nina Doherty and Junior Board Members David Cahill, Paul Variano, Victoria Rusinak, Christina Simmons, Stephanie Longosz and Gillian Gude.
Founded in 1995 with the support of the late Broadway producer Marty Richards and philanthropist Georgette Mosbacher, The New York Center for Children (NYCC) is a child-friendly Center, providing comprehensive evaluation and therapy services to victims of child abuse and their families. All of the programs and services to children and families at NYCC are completely free of charge. NYCC also offers professional training on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of child abuse.
NYCC is a not-for-profit organization that relies on donations to cover the costs of operations. NYCC serves all families, including those without insurance. In addition to evaluation and treatment, the children at NYCC also benefit from tutoring, mentoring and extracurricular events. NYCC serves children from all five boroughs of New York City. The child-friendly space is located at 333 East 70th Street, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
For more information, please visit newyorkcenterforchildren.org.
On November 9th, The Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, David Gill, and his wife Sheila Shrivastava hosted a concert in honor of the artist Alexander Polzin at the Consul’s residence. This significant date was chosen by the artist and, as the Consul General pointed out, illustrates the breadth of humanity, being both the anniversary of Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is known in Germany as Schicksalstag (Day of Fate).
The evening was the first in a series of three dedicated to Alexander Polzin; eight of his sculptures of angels currently fill the Consul’s residence. “I created my first angel sculpture,” says Polzin, “in my hometown of East Berlin just before the wall came down in 1989. None of us expected this in our lifetime but the impossible became reality, the wall was gone. The fact that the angel sculptures I created are now gathered here in New York is a sign of magical power. Art can provide a spiritual guide.”
The concert that night, for piano and violin, began with a Mozart Sonata matched with Hommage à Mozart by Konstantia Gourzi concluding with selections from Brahms. The musicians, Eoin Adnersen and Benjamin Hochman, are longtime friends of Alexander Polzin who, in addition to his work as a sculptor and painter, is a set designer and opera director.
Among the friends attending were Olivier Berggruen, Richard Brand, Joan Hardy Clark, Barbara Cohn, Tiffany Dubin, Joanna Fisher, Astrid and Kip Forbes, Michèle Gerber Klein, Manuela Hölterhoff, Beverly Jacoby and her daughter, Elizabeth Jacoby, Peter Kimmelman, Daphne Merkin, Juan Montoya and Urban Karlsson, Adrienne and Ghighi Vittadini to name just a few…
Alexander Polzin’s sculptures and paintings can be seen in public spaces across the world including Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, the Central European University in Budapest, City Hall in Nola, Italy, Collegium Helveticum, Zürich, Tel Aviv University, Opéra national de Paris, Teatro Real in Madrid, and De Mund Royal Opera House in Brussels.
In May 2016 his memorial sculpture to Paul Celan was unveiled by the mayor of Paris in the Anne Frank Garden. Major exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, Budapest, Bucharest, Naples, Berlin’s Institute of Advanced Studies, Bard College, Einstein Forum Potsdam, San Francisco International Arts Festival, Teatro Real – Madrid, NCPA Beijing, Salzburg Easter Festival, and the Anna Akhmatova Museum in St. Petersburg.
Some of the guests taking in Boller’s large-scale works, which are on display through Jan 10th, 2022, included: Amandine Freidheim, Benny Taba, Marie-Noelle Pierce, Eric Mourlot, Katherine Birch, Lisa and David Schiff, Tina Rinderknech, Maud Cabot, Jacques Azoulay, Maïlys Vranken, Terry Singh and Lauren Maillian, Cynthia Ott, Kathleen Ryan, Judy Kennel, Andrew Schiff, Karen Klopp, Shirin von Wulffen, Erika Boller, Marisa van Bokhorst, Shirin Christoffersen, and Carolyn Boller.
Photographs by Rob Rich (NYCC); John Sanderson/Annie Watt (Paige Boller).
