OMG: It Looks Just Like the Rendering: American Friends of the Israel Museum Gala

Two weeks ago we were back at Cipriani 42nd street for the American Friends of the Israel Museum's gala, and contemporary art was the artistic muse of the night. If you have never been to the Museum, it is a truly phenomenal place that contains some of the finest examples of archeology AND art the world over. The evening was called ART NEXT, and a logo was created both as a lenticular hologram on the save-the-date and as a printed piece where the word's perspective was rendered with a million lines going off into space. THAT is what inspired us.

It's always a riot to us when the actual installation looks just like our pitch drawing. A giant NEXT of welded steel, created in the form of the logo, was suspended from the ceiling with radical swoops of florescent flagging tape (miles and miles of it!) dramatically shooting to points in the ceiling, 50 feet in the air. You know, we can't really TRY OUT an installation like this in advance, so our team has to be laser sharp in their planning, their research, their 3D computer studies, and their artistic passions. I am always so PROUD of what they achieve.

Incidentally, we dropped ART from the phrase because NEXT is such a great, positive metaphor on its own, and we echoed this word on the dining tables, too. We laser cut into florescent plexi-glass sculptures, creating an optical illusion of warped perspective. This was not an occasion for elegant floral centerpieces. Rather, these glowing pieces had a terrific relationship to the installation overhead.

Many thanks to our friends at the Isreal Museum and their entire committee of visionaries. It takes a special group to be able to take the leap from paper to reality, and we can't thank you enough for believing in the NEW. When a museum stands behind their mission in EVERYTHING that they do, it is something to really admire. And I do.

D.

Photos by Susan Montagna.