PHOTOS: Inside the New York Academy of Art’s Annual Tribeca Ball

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PHOTOS: Inside the New York Academy of Art’s Annual Tribeca Ball

Eddie Roche, Alan Cumming and Cynthia Rowley. Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com

The New York Academy of Art’s annual benefit is a rare gallery evening that transcends the confines of the ballroom and puts art front and center. Last week, guests with cocktails in hand wandered through the Academy’s studios, interacting directly with the latest batch of talented MFA students, who showcased the paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints they’ve created over the course of a busy year. This is one of the most emotional nights in New York’s cultural calendar—part party and part preview of works you’ll see on gallery walls and auction houses before too long.

The guest list reflected the Academy’s particular place in New York’s art ecosystem: serious enough to draw cultural heavyweights but lively enough to draw a crowd above the patron class. Art world experts Barbara Guggenheim, Rose Dergan again Gabriel Florenz associated with philanthropists Nicole Salmasi, George Sard again Susan Wassersteinwhile patrons and collectors Bill Jacob again Sharon Jacob, Stephanie French again Suzanne Cochran hang out with a bunch of artists: Will Cotton, Vincent Desiderio, Neil Jenney, Alyssa Monks, Carla Shen and Pioneer Activities Dustin Yellin among them. Fashion designers Nicole Miller again Cynthia Rowleya photographer Sophie Elgorttelevision producer and writer Bob Cochranmedia personality Kit Keenan and the actor William Abadie we have gathered a crowd that has learned, quite rightly, that it is a different part of the city’s creative and utilitarian life.

Model Bazhan Iuliia learns art at the show. Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com

At the end of the cocktail hour, bright, color-matched walkers guide the crowd to dinner seated at tables decorated with hand-painted floral motifs. An actor Chris Hanke led a blistering auction round, and the chamber raised more than $900,000 to support the Academy’s student scholarships and community programs—a huge win for a private graduate school that relies on that very kind of generosity to ensure access to talented artists from diverse backgrounds. (We’d bet most of those in attendance heard the pull of the paddle.)

Apart from the studio meetings, the most important evenings are focused on this year’s honorees. A popular actor and long-time supporter of the Academy Alan Cumming received the charge of the night and the philanthropists Eileen Guggenheim again Russell Wilkinsonthe Academy’s founder and longtime manager. Their daughter, Isabel Wilkinson Schorshared stories about the nature of his parents’ decades of dedication to the center in a memorial that reminds the room why this night is happening in the first place.