The 2010 Brooklyn Museum Gala celebrated the Museum’s major exhibition, American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection. The event was hosted by Mario Batali, Hamish Bowles, Stefano Tonchi, Stephanie Ingrassia, Susan Weber, Zac Posen, and Carla Shen. Though the hosts are perhaps a bit expected, the art history inspired food journey, “Icons,” presented by Jennifer Rubell, brought a refreshing sense of disorder to the evening.
When arriving to events of this sort, guests often scan the room briefly before bee lining to the closest or least crowded bar, saying a quick hello to friends along the way. At this Gala, the bartenders were nowhere to be found. We chose our own glasses and shoveled our own ice. Champagne gushed out of silver Duchamp-inspired fountains. The booze was hidden inside of eight large monochrome beige canvases, inspired by Jackson Pollock, whose iconic “drip” was reinterpreted as a spigot releasing bourbon, gin, dirty martinis, screwdrivers, and lemonade, to name a few. The smell of melting cheese permeated the room as suspended Bruce Nauman-inspired Fontina molds of Rubell’s head were melted by hairdryer contraptions – dripping onto a bed of crackers below. Continuing down the gallery corridor, we came across a pile of 700 paint tubes filled with various dips and spreads that guests squeezed onto a sizeable mound of potatoes chips – and ode to Paul McCarthy’s Painter piece. Hors d’oeuvres were a hybrid combination of the fun house at a circus and a spiked juice-box kindergarten craft hour.
[caption id="attachment_6737" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Chloe Sevigny"][/caption]
The highlight of my evening was the main course, served in the majestic Beaux-Arts Court, which referenced Joseph Beuy’s work Explaining Pictures to a Dead Hare. It felt more like a modern adaptation of a tavern scene from Dutch Golden Age paintings, a tribute to chaotic gluttony. The perimeter of the court was adorned with centuries of master portraits, and at the center sat nine 8-foot square plywood alters, each piled high with individual selections of raw vegetables, whole roasted rabbits, turkeys, and suckling pigs - with animals’ faces still recognizable on a few. Whether they liked it or not, the meal was a help-yourself-and-your-fellow-guest family style smorgasbord, and guests were forced to slice and saw for their ideal cut of meat and ask their co-diners to pass the communal decanters of wine and cellars of horseradish and pesto.
[caption id="attachment_6738" align="alignnone" width="454" caption="Chef Mario Batali"][/caption]
The evening came to a close on the ground floor with a downtown Manhattan carnival inspired soiree. Nate Lowman and Leo Fitzpatrick deejayed while Rubell’s 20-ft tall piñata of Andy Warhol’s head was bashed with a baseball bat until it gushed dessert; a selection of Hostess cupcakes, Twinkies, Sno-Balls, and Ho-Hos. The guests noshed as they visited the who’s who of cool booths: Crangi Family Project for a physic reading, Philip Lim for “Celebrity Fashion Advice,” drag queens dressed as Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, and Naomi Campbell, and Rodarte for Cherry Blossom branches.
Rubell’s conception transformed the guests into the work of art; each guest became a subject worthy of commentary, some of whom were dressed to impress yet unable to carve a leg of beef and others, like Diane Von Furstenberg, were open to the spirit of the evening. She gnawed her leg of lamb down to the bone.
[caption id="attachment_6740" align="alignnone" width="468" caption="Chef Mario Batali"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_6741" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Diane Von Furstenberg"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_6742" align="alignnone" width="453" caption="Don and Mera Rubell"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_6743" align="alignnone" width="463" caption="Zac Posen"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_6744" align="alignnone" width="532" caption="Marcus Samuelsson and Maya Hailes"][/caption]
