Displaying items by tag: gala

On Sunday night, Maya Lin was standing in the main hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., next to a sculpture of Maya Lin. It was not of her own design, nor did it look anything like her work. It was by a fellow artist, the Berlin-based Karin Sander, who uses 3-D ink-jet printing to fabricate mini-models of men and women out of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. It looks like a Maya Lin action figure. It’s called Maya Lin 1.5.

“Dorothy Moss, the curator, said that they’re always interested in new ways of portraiture,” said Lin, who currently has an installation up at the newly renovated Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian that re-creates the Chesapeake Bay using 168,000 marbles.

Anniversary celebrations can easily turn vaguely sentimental, but the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is closing out its 50th year with a lineup of events more forward-looking than nostalgic. On November 7 the museum holds its annual Art + Film gala—hosted by trustee Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio—honoring artist James Turrell and filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu and featuring a performance by Sam Smith. Now in its fifth year, the event raises funds to increase film-related exhibitions on such notables as David Hockney, Christian Marclay, Tim Burton, and German Expressionist filmmakers.

On Wednesday night at the 10th anniversary gala celebrating the de Young Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco revealed 10 pledged gifts to the de Young’s permanent collection. Of the 10 works, eight were on display at the museum. The gifts are:

The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. is turning 40, and the institution is celebrating in style with a glitzy bash at New York's 4 World Trade Center on November 9. The reasoning for the location: fundraising is expected to be on a scale the museum has never previously seen.

Guests will gather to honor 40 of the world's most significant contemporary artists in recognition of the role they played not only in shaping the Hirshhorn Museum's legacy, but also the contemporary cultural landscape of present-day America.

“The end of boring art, the pelicans in the desert… Carrots. And parrots. Green peas… The art historian Clement Greenberg. All the drugs driving from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. God. God's nose."

What do all the things in this odd-sounding inventory have in common? Artist John Baldessari, of course. This list is a distillation of MOCA director Philippe Vergne's enthusiastic tribute speech at Saturday night's edition of the museum's annual fundraising gala, this time with Baldessari as its guest of honor.

With his dark eyes and wavy bronze hair, a monumental head of “Eros,” the Greek god of love, is destined to be a signature attraction at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where it was temporarily installed this week.

The museum is asking the public to help pay for the $1 million sculpture by Polish-born Igor Mitoraj in celebration of the museum’s 100th birthday this year.

It has already raised more than $300,000 and is hoping to raise the rest in contributions of any size — including pennies from kids. There will be donation boxes in the museum, a dedicated website, cellphone links and special events during a gala weekend June 26-28.

"Gratitude is the theme of our 50th anniversary," Michael Govan, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's chief executive, said at the media preview for the new exhibit "50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA's Anniversary."

The show, which is in member previews this week and opens to the public Sunday, follows a star-studded celebratory gala on April 18 that raised $5 million and featured a performance by Seal. The "50 for 50" exhibit showcases more than $675 million in gifted art from patrons including LACMA trustees Jane Nathanson and Lynda Resnick.

"There's nothing better than knowing that the big gala fundraiser is lasting in the form of '50 for 50,'" Govan said.

On Saturday, April 18, 2015, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art celebrated the museum’s 50th anniversary at a special fundraising gala, co-chaired by LACMA trustees Ann Colgin, Jane Nathanson, and Lynda Resnick. The evening welcomed approximately 750 guests and raised $5 million, the proceeds of which will benefit the museum’s programming and acquisitions. LACMA’s 50th Anniversary Gala was sponsored by Christie’s.

In honor of the occasion, Mrs. Nathanson and Mrs. Resnick gifted significant works of art to the museum’s collection; in addition, the two trustees led a campaign encouraging other patrons to donate or bequeath major artworks to LACMA.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted its fourth annual Art+Film Gala on Saturday, November 1, 2014, honoring artist Barbara Kruger and Academy Award–winning director Quentin Tarantino. Co-chaired by LACMA trustee Eva Chow and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, the evening brought together more than 600 distinguished guests from the art, design, entertainment, fashion, and music industries, among others. The evening raised $3.85 million, with proceeds supporting LACMA’s film initiatives and future exhibitions, acquisitions, and programming. The 2014 Art+Film Gala was made possible through the generous support of Gucci.

Eva Chow, co-chair of the Art+Film Gala, said "It was a truly remarkable event that saw people from the art, music, and fashion communities coming together to pay tribute to Barbara Kruger and Quentin Tarantino, two artists who push boundaries and ask questions.

Barbara Babcock Millhouse has given a painting by one of American art’s most distinguished abstract expressionist artists to Reynolda House Museum of American Art.

Allison Perkins, museum executive director, revealed “Birth,” a large-scale oil painting by Lee Krasner to an audience of more than 300 at the museum’s annual black-tie fundraising gala on Friday night.

The painting is on view in the museum’s exhibition “Love and Loss." The show examines the power of art to transform individual loss into expressions of shared experience.