The visual arts were the center of attention in Manhattan last night, as painting and photography stars were honored on both sides of town. During a cocktail-hour ceremony at the United Nations, artist Ross Bleckner was officially made a Goodwill Ambassador for his work leading art classes in war-torn northern Uganda. "It didn't take a lot of money. It just took a stack of paper and some paint," Bleckner explained, adding that he'll be making a return trip soon. While introducing the evening's honoree, Ban Ki-moon welcomed two of the evening's celebrity guests in a way that only the U.N. Secretary-General could get away with. "I just met Alex [sic] Baldwin," he announced, before going on to praise Nicolas Cage for getting the word out about illegal arms proliferation with his 1996 action film The Rock. (Yeah, that's exactly the message we took from that movie, too.)

Due west, meanwhile, some 700 guests packed into Pier 60 for the International Center of Photography's 25th annual Infinity Awards dinner. Tim Walker won in the fashion category—"the dream department of photography," as he described it—and the evening ended with Gloria Steinem presenting longtime friend Annie Leibovitz ("the most authoritative shy person I've ever met") with a Lifetime Achievement Award. After giving shout-outs to colleagues sitting at the Vogue and Vanity Fair tables, the photographer cautioned, "The word lifetime seems pretty final, and there's still a lot of work to do." Irving Penn turns 92 next month and he's still at it, she noted, before concluding, "Photography is not something you retire from."

— Darrell Hartman