LACMA gala celebrating Betye Saar and Alfonso Cuarón raises more than $4.6 million
Department of Art alumna, Betye Saar, and Oscar-winning filmmaker, Alfonso Cuarón, were honored at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ninth annual Art +Film gala, co-chaired by museum trustee Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio.
"A memorable moment from Saturday night’s Los Angeles County Museum of Art gala: 93-year-old assemblage artist Betye Saar, one of the evening’s two honorees, greeting guests in the museum’s central plaza during cocktails. The woman whom the New Yorker recently called “one of the most significant philosopher-artists of the past century” wore a flowing, sparkly black Gucci gown, her hair tucked into a turban bearing a diamond-encrusted eye pendant that her date this evening, Neil Lane, had designed for the occasion.
“It’s the all-seeing eye, it sees everything,” Saar whispered, leaning forward conspiratorially, bathed in the hazy, ethereal emerald and lavender lights from Robert Irwin’s adjacent “Primal Palm Garden.” “It’s a symbol of wisdom.”
Behind her, Space Age-like light projections shimmered against a museum wall. The vibe at this early stage of the event was mystical and otherworldly. Which was fitting, considering that Saar has used the mystical eye image in her work, especially in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The atmosphere was also a nod to the work of Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, the gala’s other honoree, particularly his space adventure movie “Gravity.”
“They’re both legends in their fields,” LACMA Director Michael Govan said during cocktails. The gala, he added, “is about bringing art and film together civically and raising the level of appreciation of film generally. In a way, it’s culminated in the Academy Museum [next door] and the partnership on Wilshire Boulevard — art and film will sit together forever and that’s a different vibe than any other city on Earth.”
Laura Dern, a member of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ board of governors, said Govan had wanted LACMA to be a collaborative hub for artists. “And you can’t ignore what film is as fine art, especially in Los Angeles,” she said. “So the combination of the two spaces is really exciting.”
LACMA’s ninth annual Art +Film gala, again co-chaired by museum trustee Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio, raised more than $4.6 million for the museum’s exhibitions, educational initiatives and film program as well as future art acquisitions."— Deborah Vankin, Nov. 3, 2019
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
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