Guggenheim Salutes Carrie Mae Weems, Jack and Susy Wadsworth at Gala

NEW YORK — Artists, collectors and supporters at Thursday night’s gala at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum made a case for public art and raised $2.3 million for the Guggenheim Foundation.

The black-tie event honored Jack and Susy Wadsworth and artist Carrie Mae Weems for advancing the Guggenheim New York’s initiatives. The artist-heavy crowd included Mariko Mori, Derrick Adams, Sarah Sze, Taryn Simon, Fred Tomaselli, Hank Willis Thomas,  John Edmonds, Alteronce Gumby, Oded Halahmy, Sheree Hovsepian, Libby Wadsworth and Mickalene Thomas. Other creative thinkers like Marianne Boesky, Gavin Brown, Jane DeBevoise, RoseLee Goldberg, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Yasufumi Nakamori and Paul Peppis were also in the mix at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building.

Before the seated dinner in the museum’s rotunda, several guests took in “Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930,” as they walked up the spiral ramp to the cocktail party at Café Rebay. En route, DJ Mei Kwok was unmissable in a sleeveless silver Simon Miller dress that mirrored a few of the kaleidoscopic compositions on the walls nearby by Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, and Marcel Duchamp. The abstract art of Orphism emerged in the 1910s, when modern life’s innovations upended time and space. The ambiance at the gala was later enhanced by performances by Esabalu and Amber Mark.

As for how art plays into today’s world and unifies people, Jack Wadsworth, honorary chairman of Morgan Stanley, said, “It’s our only chance.”

How best to introduce non-museum-goers to art? He said, “It’s about the community so you don’t introduce them to an artwork. You introduce them to creativity, innovation, risk taking and visionary thinking. That’s what it’s all about. That’s where good stuff comes from — not the old, but the new.”

That doesn’t just apply to artists, but infrastructure too, said Wadsworth, who singled out the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and M+ in Hong Kong as examples of the “new models that are being developed that we will learn from.”

Rachel Chanoff, producer of William Kentridge’s nine-episode series “Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot,” agreed. “We have to take art out of the galleries and the museums and bring it into the community. These kinds of impenetrable palaces of high art are so intimidating. It’s so important to take art out and make public art where you can really meet people where they live. Carrie Mae Weems is such a good example of an artist whose work is obviously lauded inside, but her public artwork and work with young people is where she is making such a difference.”

Marieluise Hessel, founder of the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, suggested that many more museums are needed all over the country and the best way to get people to visit them is by word-of-mouth. “They need museums for their souls and their minds. Also, they need them to understand other people,” she said.

As a child growing up in Bavaria after World War II, she started out by visiting Baroque churches, then King Ludwig II castles and eventually found museums. With government funding lacking, there is a need for more people to believe in art and culture, Hessel said. “We are nothing, if we are only politics and economics.”

During a recent visit to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, “hundreds of kids came in,” she said. “Crystal Bridges is in a cultural desert [in Bentonville, Ark.] The daughter of the founder of Walmart [Alice Walton] created an amazing museum. That’s how you bring people in. They have 3,000 people coming into a little village every day.” (Last year the museum attracted nearly 785,000 visitors.)

Another guest, Angelo Chan, cochair of the Guggenheim New York’s Asian art circle, sported a butterfly-like bow tie from Hedi Slimane’s Dior days. “So many designers ago,” he said.

Regarding the power of art, BlockFi’s managing director said, “For many of us, who are not artists, looking at art helps us go beyond the confines of our own mind and the established ways in which we think. That is more important than ever. Otherwise we cannot embrace other people’s way of looking at the world and their perspectives.”