NEW YORK — “Isn’t this the most unconventional benefit you have ever been to?” asked Cynthia Rowley, who chaired the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center 30th Anniversary Homecoming Gala Sunday. “P.S. 1 has never had a benefit, so I kept saying that we can’t just have a rubber-chicken benefit.”
The sold-out, homecoming-themed event raised about $500,000 for P.S. 1. Guests wore carnation corsages and boutonnieres handed out at the door, and big spenders had their pictures taken in homecoming outfits that Rowley designed.
“I love the theme and getting to dress up,” said curator Yvonne Force Villareal, who donned a glowing wrist corsage made by her husband, Leo. “I’ve been to every prom since I was a freshman, but I always went with quarterbacks. This is my homecoming date with an artist.”
Rachel Feinstein, on the other hand, didn’t go to her high school homecoming. “Like a typical artist, I was not appreciated in high school,” she lamented. A lot has changed, the fashion darling noted. “That Cynthia is so involved with this shows how different the art world is today,” said Feinstein, who wore a Cynthia Rowley dress to the fete. “I wish people had dressed me when I was 21.”
The evening’s dress code of “homecoming attire” confused Mayor Michael Bloomberg, so he “came as a chaperone” in a blazer over a sweater and khaki pants. “We have this great museum just across the Queensborough Bridge,” the mayor said. “This is the next great community, and it has P.S. 1.”
A self-described “goody-two-shoes in high school,” Rowley planned every high school-inspired detail, from designing capes for the prom queen and king down to hiring the caterers who did her wedding to sculptor Bill Powers. “The only thing I forgot to get was kegs of beer,” said the designer.
She did plan a slew of performing art, which ran throughout the entire dinner. Beginning with Ann Magnuson and ending with Rufus Wainwright, a series of artists saluted the New York club life of the Seventies and Eighties, with nods to drag culture and neo-burlesque performances. As P.S. 1 director Alanna Heiss proclaimed, the audience was half artists and half art lovers — “lovers of art or lovers of artists” — the latter of which raised Upper East Side eyebrows during the racier bits.