Two years of delay exploded this year’s social calendar, which last week peaked with Frieze New York and a flurry of galas and fêtes. The festivities started on Monday and lasted through the weekend as spring showers turned immediately into summer heat. We tried to pop by them all for you anyway—attending sometimes without a plus one, sometimes in the rain. Here are the ones we hosted, haunted and crashed: for the purpose of journalism, of course.
Monday’s diary started at Jack Siebert’s gallery opening and wound its way uptown to the MatchesFashion townhouse, where the brand threw down with Ghetto Gastro, Shyboi and Lehmann Maupin for a welcome to the gauntlet BBQ honoring artist Nari Ward. The food was insanely good. The company was sartorial (Emma Summerton, Becky Akinyode, Stella Greenspan and Kennedy Yanko attended). The views were interrupted, but that’s Midtown for you.
On Tuesday, choices had to be made. Everyone kicked off the evening together with the guys behind Little Book, Billy Clark and Clayton Apgar, who helped us reframe our mindset for the week over drinks at the New York EDITION’s Lobby Bar with Cultured. Then, it was off to the Whitney Gala and Studio Party for a step-and-repeat moment next to powerbrokers like Raymond Maguire, Thelma Golden, Karlie Kloss and Jeff Koons. The afterparty was a looser door with ambassador of the former like Ivy Getty and Paul Arnhold. We ran uptown to 30 Rockefeller to grab the tail end of the Gohar World launch party. We missed the doves, but we made it for Sister Nancy’s set and dancing.
On Wednesday we woke up early for Frieze’s VIP hour and then a lunch with leading women in the arts celebrating women in design, thanks to a Cultured alliance with Carpenters Workshop Gallery and Fasano Fifth Avenue. Next, it was off to celebrate collector and skincare entrepreneur Barbara Strum and her exhibition initiative with FARFETCH. Our evening was fate split us in two. One half of our team played host at the Lamb’s Club, where we announced the launch of the first ever social token made by a magazine for Web3 with our new friends at P00Ls. The other scooted to Long Island City to tuck into the MoMA PS1 gala, which attracted the likes of Mayor Eric Adams, Amy Astley and Sarah Arison to celebrate mega-patron Agnes Gund alongside Cultured alums like Rashid Johnson and Deana Lawson.
The galas kept coming. Thursday evening it was the Gordon Parks Foundation. Swizz Beatz and Amy Sherald rallied to the occasion alongside many others who’d been out all week.
By Friday, the clouds were breaking—a family dinner party hosted by Vanity Fair’s Nate Freeman and Lehmann Maupin director Sarah Levine at Café Kitsune whipped up the media crowd with sets by Venus X.
Saturday morning we got in the car to go north: first to Dia Beacon’s Spring Benefit underwritten this year by Bottega Veneta. Designer Mathieu Blazy was not in attendance but Chloë Sevigny was, with Siniša Mačković and Vanja in tow.
Then, we headed a little further up to Storm King where sculptors showed up in droves: Martin Puryear, Wangechi Mutu, Brandon Ndife, Virginia Overton to name a few. It was the last stop of a marathon. We applaud those who pulled it all off.
