The Brooklyn Museum will be partnering with Brooklyn artists to celebrate the Brooklyn Artists Ball, on Wednesday evening, April 27, 2011. This new twist on the Museum's longstanding annual gala will celebrate the creativity and considerable influence of Brooklyn artists. "It is incredibly exciting for the Museum to enlarge in yet another way its already major engagement with the community of artists living and working in Brooklyn. The new direction of the Ball signifies the Museum's enormous commitment to those artists, past and present, who are a cornerstone of the institution," said the Museum's Director, Arnold Lehman.
Museum Trustee and arts patron Stephanie Ingrassia will chair the event with Sarah Jessica Parker acting as Honorary Co-Chair. The Museum will honor Brooklyn-based artists Fred Tomaselli, Lorna Simpson, and FrEd Wilson, as well as retiring Brooklyn Museum Chair, Norman M. Feinberg. Fred Tomaselli is best known for his highly detailed paintings suspended in clear epoxy resin, which he has described as windows into a hallucinatory universe. Tomaselli has exhibited at the world's foremost galleries and institutions, including in a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2010. Ed Wilson
is an installation artist and a political activist who was chosen as the United States representative for the Venice Biennale in 2003. Wilson has had solo exhibitions around the world, including at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; and The Studio Museum in Harlem. He is also included in the Brooklyn Museum's Permanent Collection. Lorna Simpson's work portrays images of black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity, and sex. Simpson was the first African American woman to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale, had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007, and is the subject of an exhibition currently at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
The Brooklyn Artist's Ball will commence at 6 p.m. with a special VIP cocktail reception hosted by Honorary Co-Chair Sarah Jessica Parker in the Great Hall, amid a space-altering, site-specific architectural installation created by Situ Studio, a Brooklyn-based creative practice specializing in design and fabrication. The installation, reOrder: An Architectural Environment reimagines the classically ordered space, transforming the scale of the hall with stretched fabric canopies and integrated furnishings that swell, expand, and augment the profile of the existing monumental columns. Also exhibited in the Great Hall will be a pulsating animated video environment by Brooklyn-based video artist and designer Sean Capone, whose dynamic and mesmerizing large-scale video projections have received critical acclaim for their breathtaking effect.
Following the cocktail reception a sumptuous seated dinner will take place in the Museum's magnificent Beaux-Art Court. Table environments uniquely designed by Brooklyn-based artists including Aleksander Duravcevic, Valerie Hegarty, Ryan Humphrey, Bo Joseph, Jason Miller, Angel Otero, Duke Riley, Heather Rowe, Shinique Smith, Brian Tolle, Vadis Turner, Sara VanDerBeek and Anya Kielar, and Dustin Yellin will provide guests with an exceptional multi-sensory dining experience.
Tickets to the Brooklyn Artists Ball are available from $500 to $1,500 and tables range from $5,000 to $50,000. Tickets may be purchased online at www.brooklynmuseum.org. For further information on the event or ticket options please call (718) 501-6423 or e-mail emilie.schlegel@brooklynmuseum.org. Proceeds from the Brooklyn Artists Ball will support the Museum's exhibition, education, and outreach programs.
