There are two kinds of New York benefits. At the first kind, the speeches run long, the salmon runs cold, and the paddle raise feels like a hostage negotiation conducted in black tie. At the second, someone gets up from the head table and starts dancing before the dessert plates are cleared. The autumn season, which opens each year somewhere between the first Monday of fall and the last of the Hamptons houseguests, has started off firmly in the second camp.
Salsa at the Plaza
Consider Casita Maria, which recently celebrated its 92nd anniversary with its annual Fiesta! at the Plaza. The organization, as The Interior Review reminded readers in an Oct. 6 photo report from the ballroom, was founded in 1934 by the sisters Claire and Elizabeth Sullivan with Sister Mary Imelda, and calls itself the first nonprofit in the United States established specifically to serve Latino youth and families. It began in East Harlem and has been in the South Bronx since 1961. Its gala is, in that publication’s phrase, “light on speeches and heavy on dancing,” and has a reputation as one of the more boisterous evenings on the calendar.
The chairwoman since 1992 has been Jacqueline Weld Drake, who appeared, per The Interior Review, in Moschino. The chair committee included Ms. Drake, Jean Shafiroff, and HRH Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, which is the sort of committee that tells you exactly what kind of night you are in for. The honorees were the painter Hunt Slonem, a supporter for more than 35 years; the philanthropist Sonia Gutt de Haime; and Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, who received the Jackie Weld Drake Living Legend Award. Spotted in the room, according to the same report: the developer and Met board member Daniel Brodsky, Sharon Bush, Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin, Fe and Alessandro Fendi, Gloria and Carey Fieldcamp, the interior designer Juan Montoya, and the critic and adviser Avalon Bellos.
The evening’s quiet power move came from the honoree himself. Mr. Rodriguez-Cubeñas announced that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund would commit $100,000 to Casita Maria, after which Paul Florez led a paddle raise that The Interior Review described as producing “a record-breaking funding round.” The actress Sissi Fleitas opened the program and presented the awards; Bob Hardwick Sound did the rest, from salsa to standards. Mr. Slonem, for his part, gave the night its thesis. “As a child, I wanted to be an artist due to the support I received in school,” he said, per the report. “Casita Maria provides that same support, opening windows into the arts for many students in New York.” Guests went home with a gift bag containing a notepad from his Hop Up Shop, which is the most Hunt Slonem sentence ever written.
It is worth noting, too, that the gala’s dinner, as The Interior Review put it, represents a vast majority of the organization’s yearly income. The bunnies and the Moschino are fun. The math is serious.
The surprise at Guastavino’s
Earlier, on Sept. 28, the Denyce Graves Foundation took over Guastavino’s, the tiled vault under the Queensboro Bridge, for its Harvest Moon Gala. The chairs were Barbara Tober and Ann Gottlieb; the emcee was Deborah Roberts of ABC’s 20/20. The honorees, as Harlem World and others reported, were Misty Copeland, the Metropolitan Opera‘s music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the Met’s great patron Ann Ziff. Susan Graham, John Holiday and Joshua Bell performed.
And then, unannounced, Paul Simon sang. Off the Mrkt observed that “galas are graded on their surprises,” which is true, and this one earned an A. Writing in amNewYork, a guest described the room inhaling at once and confessed to hoping, against all reason, for “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” That writer also called the evening “a living counter-archive in black tie,” which is the best line anyone has filed from a gala this season and which we are, regrettably, not allowed to steal.
The substance underneath the sparkle: the foundation’s Hidden Voices initiative recovers the stories of overlooked musicians, and Ms. Copeland received its inaugural Mary Cardwell Dawson Humanitarian Award, named for the founder of the National Negro Opera Company. Presenting it, the director Kenny Leon said, according to Harlem World, that “Misty didn’t walk through the door and simply celebrate being first. She turned around and held that door open.” Ms. Copeland, accepting, spoke of the ballerina Raven Wilkinson and of “wanting the next generation to know these women sooner than we did.”
The dance card, continued
If the opening weeks were about joy, the next fortnight is about institutions, and the venues are doing a good deal of the talking.
On Saturday, Oct. 24, the Holland Society of New York holds its 136th Dinner Dance at the Lotos Club on East 66th Street, with music by the Peter Duchin Orchestra. Its Medal of Distinguished Achievement goes this year to Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly, the founders of the Irish Repertory Theatre. Tickets run from $300 for members under 40 to $25,000 for a Benefactor table of ten, and, in a detail that warms this magazine’s heart, non-members must secure an introduction from a current member before they are permitted to buy one. There are still corners of New York where you cannot simply pay to get in, and long may they flourish.
On Wednesday, Oct. 28, the World Monuments Fund brings its Hadrian Gala, its largest fundraiser, to the Waldorf Astoria, whose exterior and interiors, the fund notes, are designated New York City landmarks. The co-chairs are Pauline Eveillard, Marina Kellen French and Christian Louboutin; David and Caryn Rubenstein are honorary co-chairs. A preservation charity throwing its big night in a freshly restored Park Avenue landmark is either a lovely piece of thematic programming or the world’s most elegant site visit. Possibly both.
And on Thursday, Oct. 29, the Hispanic Society Museum & Library holds its annual gala at the Metropolitan Club, presenting its Sorolla Medal to Eduardo Costantini, founder of Buenos Aires’s MALBA; to Gloria and Emilio Estefan; and to the life and legacy of Oscar de la Renta. The dinner is sold out, the society announced, though the Ritmo dance party afterward, at 9 p.m., is not. The Estefans and de la Renta, as it happens, both appear on Casita Maria’s long roster of past honorees and supporters. New York philanthropy is a small town with very good tailoring.
What it adds up to
None of these evenings is new, and that is rather the point. Casita Maria is 92. The Holland Society is on its 136th dinner dance. The Hadrian Gala dates to 1988. In a season when everything else in the city, from the mayoralty to the property tax bill, seems to be up for renegotiation, the benefit circuit is offering the comfort of ritual, with a salsa band and, if you are lucky, a Simon.
The City Politic has reached out to Casita Maria, Hunt Slonem’s studio, the Denyce Graves Foundation, the Holland Society of New York, the World Monuments Fund, and the Hispanic Society Museum & Library for comment, and will update this story with any response.
Photo: The Plaza, circa 1908, by Ewing Galloway, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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