Out for Funds
A Pair of Eclectic Downtown Benefits
Creative Time had plenty of good reasons for holding its annual benefit in a Chinatown dim sum palace. One, the public art outfit was celebrating its mission's going global. Two, honorees Marc and Andrea Glimcher of the Pace Gallery recently opened a branch in Beijing. And, last but not least, the organizers figured an offbeat venue (complete with a deafening dinner gong) might just be good for sales. "The kitsch removes any intimidation and adds to the joviality," pointed out Phillips de Pury auctioneer Alexander Gilkes, who moved a piece of made-to-order jewelry by Anna Hu and a Vik Muniz portrait commission during the live auction.
Phillip Lim, who was seated at a table with photographers Vinoodh Matadin and Inez van Lamsweerde, was certainly in jovial spirits. "That's major," he remarked about the escalator he'd ridden to get up to the party. Presumably, he would have had to reach for a second superlative to describe the team of dragon dancers who got the crowd moving to the sounds of Jay-Z.
Meanwhile, across town at Hiro, Anthology Film Archives had thrown together a nontraditional fundraiser of its own. With Moby on the decks, Lou Reed improvising a guitar soundtrack for an experimental film being projected onstage, and nary a necktie in sight, the proceedings had the feel of a good old-fashioned "happening," albeit one with an extra sense of urgency. The pioneering East Village avant-garde movie house has seen better days, after all. "The thing is, what Anthology gives, you can't get anywhere else," Philip Seymour Hoffman told the audience. And it needs a new roof, he added. Considering how many supporters turned up—Julian Schnabel, Cynthia Rowley, and Eddie Borgo, included—Anthology might just get it.
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