5.11.09: Weekend Winds | New York Social Diary

Weekend Winds

Sunset over the Hudson. 6:30 PM. Photo: JH.

May 11, 2009. A beautiful weekend in New York; a bright sunny Sunday with a cool, strong breeze by the river.

Carl Schurz Park, 2:00 PM.

Last Thursday night Georgette Mosbacher hosted a book party for Michael Gross at her Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the Metropolitan Museum. Michael’s book is called “Rogues Gallery; The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money that Made the Metropolitan Museum” so everything was site specific.

Georgette is one of the few salonistes here in New York and she also gives quite a few receptions for friends coming out with new books. NYSD readers might remember there was one a couple of weeks ago for Randy Jones’ new book “The Richest Man in Town.”

Michael Gross’ book is somewhat about the richest man (or rather, men) in town, and then some. When you get art and money together, seemingly you always get intrigue, not to mention a few other tricks of the trade.

Tom Hoving was at the party. Mr. Hoving was director of the Met during the turbulent Sixties. Before his time you could go to the Met on a Saturday or Sunday and it often seemed quite empty. And quiet and peaceful. He changed all that. He hung out those banners and promoted the exhibitions. He jazzed up the culture of the Met and made the clarion call, creating. the image that the Met has today.

Nature's bounty and beauty at chez Mosbacher.

Michael Gross withhis newest sensation: Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money that Made the Metropolitan Museum. Click to order.

I took a picture of the author with Mr. Hoving and his wife Nancy (their meeting and marriage is chronicled in the book – they are still together forty-odd years later).

I asked the former Met director how he liked the book. He said he thought Michael had done a very good job. Although, he added, “I come off like an asshole; but then again I was an asshole.”

As you can see the ebullient Mr. Hoving is frank and unabashed. A rara avis in those circles, to be sure, not always easy for delicate egos.

Mr. Hoving was also Parks Commissioner, and as he did with the Met, he turned Central Park into a destination after years of deterioration, neglect and lowering visitor figures. Weekends in the Park, like weekends a the Met were not highly attended the way they are today. He turned it into a community celebration.

Michael Gross and his editor Peter Gethers talk about the publication of "Rogues Gallery" before the guests at Georgette Mosbacher's.

Nancy and Tom Hoving with the author

John Radzicjewski and Laurie Dhue

At six-thirty in the evening, although the shades had been drawn to block it, the late afternoon sun was warm and streaming into the grand salon of Mme. Mosbacher. Because of that we could not clearly see the museum even thought it was just across the avenue.

In the crowd, Michael’s wife, Barbara Hodes, Hunt Slonem, Maria Smith, Bill Brock, Patricia Burnham, Ghislaine Maxwell, Ann Downey, Caroline Hirsch, Anita Sarko, Katherine Bryan, her son George Gurley, Nicole Miller, Lisa and Julian Niccolini, Anne Hearst and Jay McInerney, Iris Love, Milly de Cabrol and Jeff Podolsky, Ann Rapp, Ed Johnston, Gail and Kevin Buckley, Jolie Hunt, Liliana Cavendish, Jonathan and Somers Farkas, Dana Hammond, Kim Heirston-Evans, Nancy Gillon, Robert Pounder, Lloyd Grove, Chris Taylor, Tom McGrath, Gerry Fabrikant, James and Heather Higgins, Gay Talese, Sam Peabody, Paul Kanavos and Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, Peggy Siegal, Harriet and Ron Weintraub, Roy Kean, Laurie Dhue and John Radzicjewski, Catherine Saxton, Peter Gethers (Michael’s editor), Sara Vass, Richard Mauro, Randy Jones, Charlie Scheips and many many more.

Catherine Saxton and David Skinner

Christine Biddle and friends

Gerry Fabrikant and Michael Gross's sister Jane

Sam Peabody

Georgette Mosbacher and Michael Gross

Iris Love, Howard Tuckman, and Carol Babb

Sara Vass and Richard Mauro

Jolie Hunt and Michelle Horowitz

Geoffrey Thomas

Lloyd Grove, Chris Taylor, and George Gurley

Jim Mundy with Gail and Kevin Buckley

Ed Johnston, Ann Rapp, and Charlie Scheips

Georgette Mosbacher and Jolie Hunt

Peggy Siegal

Bob Kean and his father, Roy Kean

Marie Brenner

Nancy Silverman with Neil Fox and Martha Kramer

Julian Niccolini

Desperate housewives; New York housewives. If they weren’t talking about the Met, at least a few of them were talking about the breakup of the Stephanie Seymour/Peter Brant marriage which hit the tabs over this past weekend.

Mr. Brant is reported to have changed the locks on the doors of their house in Greenwich so that Mrs. Brant can’t get in. What was the name of that Harold Robbins’ novel? “Where Has Love Gone?” To the locksmith.


	Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant

Mr. Brant is very rich from a Canadian pulp paper business and other investments. He’s a polo player with his own string of ponies and a major figure in the contemporary art world. Evidently his art collection is among the assets that have been transferred out of his name and into a foundation, therefore out of the reach of divorce settlements.

I don’t know the couple. I’ve seen them a thousand times at dinners, galas, in Europe, in Southampton. They seemed to travel in one of those orbits where you imagine a life out of a fashion magazine. Just too to and so very very very. They were a good looking couple. He’s no matinee idol but it is true that with that kind of beauty by a man’s side, casts a welcome glow and she’s a real beauty, on-camera and off.

I’ve never had a conversation with either so I have no take on her personality or his. It looked like the tycoon syndrome. She’s so naturally beautiful that you’d kind of assume (along with what we know about their multi-residential/international high life) that they must be ... happy ...? We know how naïve a thought like that really is; however it still doesn’t mar a first impression, and since we never spoke, the first impression has remained.

Mr. Brant was previously married for quite a few years also to Sandy Brant, mother of five of his children. After their divorce the first Mrs. Brant got involved in her husband’s magazine Interview with her partner Ingrid Sichy.

You see from the looks of it, you never know when people have had enough. Or too much of not enough, which is how it often translates by the time they get to the lawyers. Then it’s All About The Money. To the point where you can even conclude that’s all it ever was about.


Ken and Josie Natori's invitation to their evening for Yanna Avis.

Meanwhile, back to last Thursday, beautiful night in New York. I went from the Mosbacher/Gross book party down the avenue to Ken and Josie Natori’s where they were having a little reception concert for Yanna Avis.

The beautiful Yanna, who is the widow of Warren Avis (the man who created the Rent-a-Car), is an authentic chanteuse who has appeared here in cabaret numerous times.

She has just finished another album and so the Natoris decided to give their friends an opportunity to hear (and be entertained) by Yanna.

She’s French; need I say more. She sings to her audience; to you, cheri! The repertoire is French and American songs. Her encores were “Just A Gigolo ... everywhere you go; People know the part you’re playing ...” and finally “La Vie En Rose” Ahh, cherie!

From the Natoris I grabbed a cab to cross the Park to dinner at the Central Park West penthouse of Susan Weber. Dr Weber was hosting a dinner for the American Friends of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Before the dinner, the group had a private tour of the Barrie and Deedee Wigmore collection of the American Aesthetic Movement at the Wigmores’ apartment which coincindentally is across the street from the Weber penthouse.

I missed the tour although I was told the Wigmore collection is astounding.

Susan Weber’s apartment had been created for a previous owner by Philippe Starck. Susan made some important changes on acquisition but the Starck influence is still present in a very beautiful and spacious contemporary apartment with magnificent views of Central Park and the East Side of Manhattan.

Diana Quasha, who is Chairman of the American Friends of the V&A organized this evening which was also attended by Mark Jones who is the director of the V&A. Mr. Jones who is very tall and very British, is the antithesis of an imperious museum director. His job requires a great deal of traveling because the V&A has exhibitions and exchange exhibitions with other museums and governments around the world, including our Smithsonian. He’d come over to New York the night before (morning here) and after dessert and his brief talk to the guests, he grabbed his bag and was out the door headed for Kennedy and London. That was his day in New York.

Spring flowers on Susan Weber's hearth.

Dr. Susan Weber and her guest of honor, Mark Jones, of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The Friends of the V&A are all very serious connoisseurs and/or collectors as well as supporters of art and culture. This is the other side of the story that Michael Gross has also profiled in his “Rogues Gallery.” It seems removed from the ego and the intrigue and simply the pleasure of the arts.

Susan Weber is another one of those remarkable New York personages. In the early 1980s she married a hedge fund owner named George Soros. In the early 1990s, having studied at Barnard, Parsons and the Royal College of Art where she got her PhD, she established the Bard Graduate Center which offers graduate degrees in the history of the decorative and applied arts, cultural and design history, and garden history and landscape studies, where she is also Professor in the History of the Decorative Arts. Dr. Weber and Mr. Soros divorced, after twenty-one years of marriage (and two sons) in 2004. In this case it seems no one got locked out of the house by anyone.

Also last Thursday night, Bide-A-Wee held their “Gala on the Green 2009” at the Tavern-on-the-Green hosted by Bernadette Peters.

I don’t know Ms. Peters but I see her at many fundraising events especially those having to do with helping the little pets have been discarded or overlooked or rescued from the clutches of damned fools (to put it extremely politely); and I see a heart.

“Adoption is a Green Option” was printed on the invitation (I didn’t make it to the evening). Bide-a-wee’s mission is to promote safe long-term relationships between people and their pets.

Pets can teach you much about love and all its attributes like kindness, patience, and humanity. Good lessons for better living through loving.

To learn more about bide-a-wee: www.bideawee.org.