This year’s Art & Artists Gala, that other big annual fundraiser at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, came a few days after the institution unveiled a massive expansion and vision for its future. Cheers!
The Met Gala and the Art & Artists Gala
Once upon a Gotham it was simply a springtime society function for supporters of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s center for couture and historic items of clothing. But since the ’90s, it’s been co-chaired by Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour (who is also the chief content officer and global editorial director of Vanity Fair parent company Condé Nast) and has become the most prestigious event one can attend on planet earth (not biased, this is just true, sorry haters). Nearly every lifestyle- and entertainment-related media outlet or social media maker worth their salt lives and dies by the Met Gala, cranking out content about the attendees getting ready in their Upper East Side hotel suites, about the looks on the red carpet, about the costume changes into after-party attire, about the viral online moments, and about the herculean effort to stay out till dawn with the fashion folk at all-night ragers.
But for years there’s been another Met gala, one certainly more under-the-radar, without the pre-parties at Bemelmans Bar and the after-parties at the Boom Boom Room. It’s the secret Met gala, the one for the art world: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Art & Artists Gala. Each year, the party raises money specifically for the acquisitions fund that allows new work to enter the collection of the greatest museum in America. And while it’s not as starry as that party in May, it’s no small feat to get the 540 most important folks in the art world together to nibble on caviar next to the Temple of Dendur.
“And yes, besides this gala, there is another Met gala—and yes, that gala has co-chairs Jennifer Lopez and Zendaya,” Met director Max Hollein said on Wednesday, addressing the crowd. “But the superstars of chairing galas are the co-chairs of the Art & Artists Gala here tonight.”
And then he listed the co-chairs, not so shabby in their own right: Samantha Boardman, Jordan Casteel, Amy Griffin, Aerin Lauder, Dasha Zhukova Niarchos, and Ann G. Tenenbaum.
This year’s Art & Artists Gala, sponsored by Tiffany, came in the middle of a big week in Met land. On Monday, the museum announced the plans for the Tang Wing, a massive building project that will affix a five-story structure onto The Met’s current cluster of buildings, adding 70,000 square feet of exhibition space for modern and contemporary art. The architect leading the charge, Frida Escobedo, had a tricky tightrope to walk—she couldn’t extend beyond the museum’s 1880 footprint in Central Park, and the wing couldn’t eclipse the height of the original building. But she appears to have nailed it. Mayor Eric Adams is a fan: “The Tang Wing is a bold endeavor to expand our understanding of the role of art in New York’s culture and our society,” he said in a statement.
And hard-to-please architecture critic Justin Davidson wrote this week that the building will work, even if he yearned for a bigger swing.
“It’s clear that Escobedo’s team has produced interior plans of luminous rationality, creating galleries that are simultaneously distinct and flexible and knitting the future wing into the rest of the museum so that you can enter a high-ceilinged room and experience a burst of majesty—or slide in from an old building and hardly notice the transition,” he wrote in his review for New York.
The Tang Wing won’t be ready until 2030, but the museum has plenty to show off for the time being. On Wednesday the Great Hall was festooned with holiday garlands, with the New York City Gospel Choir singing seasonal songs as the guests in tuxedos streamed in. Extreme Christmas-in-Manhattan vibes. Hollein was there front and center. He came in to straighten my bow tie, and asked about how Miami went—he was in Paris instead for the opening of Notre Dame and meetings at The Louvre.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the A-listers in attendance—Jerry Seinfeld was there with his wife, Jessica, chatting with Tenenbaum, the longtime Met supporter who has a place down the road from the Seinfelds in East Hampton. (It’s on the market, last listed at $95 million.) Elsewhere, a photo op of a number of artists assembled by the Great Hall was an early evening highlight. It was quite the crew: Derek Fordjour, Anastasia Samoylova, Arlene Shechet, Lee Bul, Sarah Sze, Rashid Johnson, Sheree Hovsepian, Amy Sherald, Sadie Barnette, Dana Schutz, Jennie C. Jones, and Jordan Casteel. Jeff Koons and Francesco Clemente lingered around the crowd, and Nicole Eisenman and Ambera Wellmann were locked in conversation with New York Times writer Zachary Small. Johnson broke off to chat with Fordjour and Karma gallery founder Brendan Dugan, discussing the luminous new profile of Johnson by living legend Calvin Tomkins, 98-year-old staff writer at The New Yorker, in this week’s issue.
Elsewhere, Tyler Mitchell was talking to board member Jamie Singer Soros about the sheer number of holiday parties to get to this weekend. Sotheby’s CEO Charlie Stewart greeted Sara Friedlander, who, of course, is a deputy chairman at Sotheby’s archrival Christie’s, there along with Marc Porter and Alex Rotter—but everybody got along great. ’Tis the season, all that good stuff. Legendary board members such as Ronald Lauder and Marina Kellen French joined the relatively newer members, such as Casteel, and Soros, and Zero Bond founder Scott Sartiano (who is serving as the mayor’s liaison on the board), and Steve Stoute, the record label exec who joined the board in December 2023.
Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, there with her artist husband, Mike Starn, said that even though she directs a museum of her own a borough away, being at The Met always bowls her over.
“When I’m feeling down about humanity, I go to The Met,” she said.
Soon enough it was time to march over through the Egyptian wing to the Temple of Dendur, the showstopping backdrop to Met galas both in May and December—as well as to some pretty great fake galas in movies like Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and Maid in Manhattan. Larry Gagosian wound his way over at the beckoning of The Met’s head of modern and contemporary art, David Breslin, and then the mega-dealer went to greet Nan Goldin, the Gagosian-repped artist with a show up now at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Come to think of it, the director of that museum, Klaus Biesenbach, was a few steps ahead too.
Soon enough everyone was taking their seats astride a temple that Roman emperor Augustus commissioned in 23 BCE, which stood on the banks of the Nile for millenia. There would be toasts to artists from Hollein, who noted that so many artists—regardless of their medium, or age—tell him that their favorite museum is The Met.
Hollein also addressed some of the more important aspects of his job as the director of the largest museum in the United States.
“I know this is an opinionated crowd—you have suggestions—and I as the Met director am the recipient of these suggestions,” he said, diplomatically. “We need to have more benches. The wall labels need to be bigger. We need to do something about the hot dog vendors outside the museum—but we are also hearing that the hot dogs are too expensive.”
“As your Met director, I will take care of this,” Hollein deadpanned.
There was a wonderful video presentation of the artist Sarah Sze picking some of her favorite moments in the museum, but otherwise the proceedings were light on programming, allowing everyone to get to know their tablemates. I was blessed with the presence of the architect Nathan Rich, who reminisced on building out the Perrotin gallery on Orchard Street, and Nader Tehrani, who is finishing up the renovation of the Ancient Near Eastern and Cypriot Art wing. There were also directors from the Matthew Marks Gallery, Beau Rutland and Jacqueline Tran, and at one point Tran spotted an odd assortment of young people all approaching an older blond lady at the table next to us.
“Everyone just wants to talk to Martha Stewart,” Tran said.
As the dinner wound on and guests chowed down on deconstructed beef Wellington, Hollein tapped a glass for another announcement: The evening had raised a record $4.8 million to go to the acquisitions fund. And yes, that is just a fraction of the record sum of more than $26 million that the Met Gala raised last May, but it’s still a massive haul by any measure, more than most famous museums achieve during their one big fundraiser.
And Hollein insisted that the funds would immediately be put to good use.
“If you are worried and thinking, Are we going to spend that money? Yes, we will spend it all,” Hollein said, the crowd in stitches. “We have all our curators here tonight, and they will have plans for the money tomorrow morning.”
The Rundown
Your crib sheet for the comings and goings in the art world this week and beyond…
- …When Luigi Mangione was announced as a person of interest in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I did what you would expect your Vanity Fair culture correspondent to do: I went to his Facebook page to look for any evidence that the alleged killer was a big fan of contemporary art. And lo and behold, what did I find but a picture of Mangione that he posted on August 24, 2019, of himself at SFMoMA in San Francisco. In the picture, he’s posing with Dan Flavin’s Untitled (in Honor of Leo at the 30th Anniversary of His Gallery), which has been in the museum’s collection since 2012, and is currently on view. (The “Leo” in the title is Leo Castelli.) The picture, along with the rest of his Facebook page, was taken down by Meta on Monday, but I managed to snap a screenshot right before. Mangione’s X profile picture also shows him in front of what appears to be a step and repeat at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But as far as Mangione’s connections to the art world, well, that appears to be it.
- …Before the big party at The Met, I stopped by a book launch for another hospitality guy I’ve profiled for the magazine: Mario Carbone. It was at ZZ’s Club, in the private room, of course. Along with his Major Food Group partners Jeff Zalaznick and Rich Torrisi, he’s put together a beautiful Assouline book that looks back at the first decade of Carbone, the restaurant, and further discusses the magic behind Mario’s meatballs. There’s plenty of food-porn pictures printed in high gloss, and some great writing by expert restaurant-world scribe (and VF contributor) Gabe Ulla, who provided the text. Plus recipes! The Caesar Alla ZZ might lose a bit of the oomph when you eat it at home, not tossed tableside surrounded by the restaurant’s “Sinatra-washed rigatoni fantasia,” as I once called it. But it’s still a real good salad.
- …The museum show featuring Roman sculptures referred to as the Torlonia marbles was low-key the hottest joint in Paris during Art Basel this year, causing collectors who usually stick to the contemporary art galleries to hightail it over to The Louvre. This week it was announced that next year the Torlonia marbles will be touring North America for the first time. They’ll be at the Art Institute of Chicago from March 15 to June 29, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth from September 14 to January 25, 2026, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from March 14 to July 19, 2026.
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Nate Freeman