The Crowd: Art of Dining supports the other arts
Manhattan style arrived in Costa Mesa on the evening of June 7 as the Art of Dining unfolded at South Coast Plaza. Benefiting the Orange County Museum of Art, the very chic night at the plaza raised an impressive $460,000 in support of the art museum’s exhibition and education programs.
Presenting sponsor Louis Vuitton opened the progressive dining event with an in-store champagne reception at dusk. The black-tie crowd was shoulder to shoulder in the Vuitton salon surrounded by the LV merchandise, a standard of the world of art meeting fashion retail for more than a century and a half.
While it may sound superficial, perhaps even pretentious, the Art of Dining is arguably the most au currant charitable event on the Orange County circuit. Supporters are modern, glamorous, typically youthful and at least somewhat knowledgeable about contemporary art. Fashions shown off are trend-setting, and cocktail chatter is generally more highbrow:
The Vuitton crowd talked politics, the escalation of war in Iraq and the ethics of Bowe Bergdahl’s release from Taliban captivity. Impressive for a Saturday night dress-up in one of America’s most fashionable and exclusive shopping plazas.
Among the most glamorous was Elizabeth Segerstrom, wife of South Coast Plaza managing partner Henry Segerstrom. Elizabeth floated into the affair in a stunning summer couture gown with a modified train by Oscar de la Renta. The Segerstroms had recently returned from New York, where they honored de la Renta at the annual Carnegie Hall foundation event.
Joining the best-dressed list were Newport’s Pamela Paul, in a fitted, red silk floor-length “movie star”-appropriate gown, and Twyla Reed Martin, wearing a sophisticated black lace gown with train under a modern tailored black sequin blazer with mandarin collar. Debra Gunn Downing was also a show-stopper, understated yet always original and artistically creative in her choice of designer fashion.
Downing was front and center representing another of the evening’s presenting sponsors, South Coast Plaza, joining Kathryn Cenci and Anton and Jennifer Segerstrom, major supporters of the Orange County Museum of Art.
Others deserving ink for their support of the event and the museum include corporate donor BMW and individual donors Frances and Edward Frankel, Sherry and John Phelan, James Brooks, Renetta and Blaine Caya, and Michelle and Paul Janavs, to name only a few.
The fab jewels of Cartier were represented by the always fashionable Caroline Jones. Super car dealer and hipster Danny McKenna with his striking blond wife, Jeri, Jennifer Van Bergh with husband Tom Box, erudite couple Dee and Gianna Kerrison and community activists Karen and Don Evarts made the Art of Dining a serious “who’s who” event in the O.C.
It was all just getting started as the crowd left Vuitton and landed at the plaza’s Garden Terrace for an hors d’oeuvre reception catered by AnQi and featuring sushi by Hamamori. An outdoor living room furnished in stark black and white upholstered pieces fronted a raised stage draped in black duvetyn curtains.
OCMA chief curator and interim Director Dan Cameron joined museum dignitaries, including President Craig Wells, trustee Baraa Sarakby, and event organizers and donors Irene and Lucio Martino, Sally and Randy Crockett, Marsha and Daryl Anderson, Inga Beder, Susan Etchandy and Valérie Chapoulaud-Floquet, in welcoming the honorees of the year, artist Diana Thater and Christina Buck, representing the family of the late Orange County philanthropist and art collector Gerald Buck.
Thater, 51, is a California-born visual artist working in electronic media and offering a radical view of humanity and nature in her pieces, which push technology to its limits. Her work has been showcased in serious museums worldwide.
The late Gerald and Bente Buck loved contemporary art and championed the Orange County museum from its formative early days. In addition to lending major works, the Bucks underwrote countless exhibits and supported educational programs for decades.
The third stop on the Art of Dining extravaganza was the formal dinner, served across the South Coast Plaza bridge over Bear Street. It was a daring and novel move. More than 300 guests were seated at rectangular tables traversing the expanse draped in pale gray silk, ablaze with floating candles in crystal cylinders of varying sizes and dimensions.
Mylar wind chimes hung from the rafters like modern chandeliers moving about in the breeze. An army of waiters in starched white uniforms served a four-course dinner prepared by Patina Restaurant Group chef and founder Joachim Splichal. A rather exotic second course of octopus raised an eyebrow or two.
Post-dinner, the crowd returned to the Garden Terrace, which had been transformed into a late-night club-disco featuring the beat of deejay Side Project and more gourmet food prepared and served by Charlie Palmer at Bloomingdale’s.
Spotted in the late-night crowd were donors Tracy Schroeder, Lynne Cooke, Tommaso De Vecchi, Charles and Pat Steinmann, Gregg Schwenk, Vanessa Villa, Ellen Marshall, Molly Saleeb and Rima Nashibi.
THE CROWD runs Fridays. B.W. Cook is editor of the Bay Window, the official publication of the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach.
