MASS MoCA - Benefit in New York 2008

Our 4th annual NYC benefit is chaired by Gregory & Ivy Crewdson and Hans & Kate Morris. This dinner and auction will take place at Capitale, a Stanford White-designed Beaux Arts architectural gem on the Bowery, and will feature a special performance by Yo La Tengo. All proceeds from this event will support the creation of new works of art and performance at MASS MoCA. If you’d like to purchase tickets to the event, please contact Rebecca Wehry at 413.664.4481 x8157.

Even if you cannot attend, you can still place bids for the auction. Download an Absentee Bid Form (PDF) for the MASS MoCA 2008 Benefit Auction in New York.

Precise from That Is Right And Other Similarities, 1989, AP
Lithograph on white Rives BFK paper
9 × 11 inches
Framed

Encompassing photography, drawing, painting, and artist books, the work of Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha holds a mirror up to the banality of urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confront us daily. Ruscha’s early career as a graphic artist continues to influence his aesthetic and thematic approach. His work has been exhibited at major institutions around the world. In 2004, the Whitney Museum of American Art organized two simultaneous exhibitions: Cotton Puffs, Q-tips®, Smoke and Mirrors: The Drawings of Ed Ruscha and Ed Ruscha and Photography. Ruscha was the U.S. representative at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. The artist’s Country Cityscapes series is currently on exhibit at MASS MoCA as a part of Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. Tonight’s work is an artist’s proof lithograph from his 1989 series, That Is Right And Other Similarities. Gift of Ed Ruscha.

Estimated Value: $3,500

Photo courtesy of Matthew Ritchie and Andrea Rosen Gallery © Matthew Ritchie

Matthew Ritchie’s artistic mission has been no less ambitious than an attempt to represent the entire universe and the structures of belief that we use to understand and visualize it. Ritchie’s encyclopedic project (continually expanding and evolving like the universe itself) stems from his imagination, and his paintings, drawings and installations delineate the universe’s formation as well as humanity’s attempts to comprehend its vastness. Ritchie’s work has been shown in one-person exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), SFMOMA, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Miami), among others, and is featured in the collections of the Whitney, MoMA, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. MASS MoCA hosted Ritchie’s sweeping solo exhibition Proposition Player in 2004. Tonight’s work is from Ritchie’s series of five drawings, The Bridge of Years. Courtesy of Matthew Ritchie and Andrea Rosen Gallery.

Estimated Value: $24,000

Go to the movies in ski boots. Two lucky guests will join MASS MoCA’s VIP trip to the Sundance Film Festival (January 22–26, 2009), seeing choice films, meeting directors and writers, and hitting the slopes. It’s a unique and exhilarating experience to sit down for dinner with the creators of a film you’ve just seen. We’ll stay at Robert Redford’s snowy Sundance Resort tucked into the canyons above the fray of Park City (“Top 100 World’s Best Places to Stay”—Conde Nast Traveller), and each guest receives two spa massages and two activity passes (downhill or cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or an art class). The package includes 4 nights at the Resort, 4 breakfasts, 4 dinners, numerous screenings, and VIP festival credentials. (Transportation not included.) Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

Estimated Value: $7,500

Surrogate Mountains’ Berkshire Vacation, 2008
Porcelain, mortar, steel pipe
Eight 12 × 6-inch sculptures

The work of Seattle artist Vaughn Bell often involves a displacement of sorts, placing earth inside museums or making moveable mountains. Last summer, MASS MoCA collaborated with the Berkshire Botanical Garden on an exhibition of new works of art created exclusively for the Garden, which served as a companion to MASS MoCA’s show Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. For the exhibition, Bell created a collection of eight miniature replicas of Mt. Rainier, transporting a natural icon of her own Pacific Northwest to the Berkshires. The sculpture is perfect for installation in a yard or garden, where the cluster of displaced peaks resembles mushrooms, further blending into the landscape. Gift of Vaughn Bell.

Estimated Value $3,800

Untitled (Prototype for Calais, ME Border Project), 2007
Cast aluminum, white paint, concrete footing
11 feet tall
The free-wheeling wind vane is approximately 3 × 5 feet

Spencer Finch, whose first retrospective at MASS MoCA in 2007 (What Time Is It On The Sun?) was profiled in an Art in America cover story, has generously donated a large sculptural weathervane. The kinetic work is a prototype for a project that Finch will be installing along the US/Canada border in Calais, Maine. (This prototype was field-tested on the MASS MoCA campus in the winter and spring of 2008.) Finch has been selected to create the inaugural art commission for the opening of High Line Park in New York this fall, and his work is in the collections of the High Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt), and the Guggenheim, among others. Gift of Spencer Finch.

Estimated Value: $14,000

Image © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

Shipyard #13, Qili Port, Zhejiang Province, China, 2005 (ed. 11/25)
Digital Chromogenic Color Print
22 × 18 inches
Framed

Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. The formal beauty of his photographs contrasts dramatically with the harsh realities they depict. Burtynsky’s remarkable images of global industrial landscapes are in the collections of major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Bibliotèque Nationale (Paris), MoMA, and the Guggenheim. This image was shot at Qili Port, home to China’s largest mid-size shipyard. On any given day one can see some 100 ships in production, lined up against the water’s edge with their sterns pointing out to sea. Other works from Burtynsky’s China series are currently on exhibit at MASS MoCA as a part of Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China. Gift of Edward Burtynsky.

Estimated Value $4,500

An exquisite opportunity… In the heart of Bordeaux, on a high ridge above the small winding road from Leognan to Cadujac, sits the 79-acre vineyard of Château Haut-Bailly. The first vines were planted in the 17th century, and in the late 19th century the vineyard was owned by Alcide Bellot des Minières, a man nicknamed ‘King of Vintners’ by his contemporaries. Bellot des Minières enlarged the estate and built the elegant chateau that stands today. The chateau and winery have undergone a complete restoration over the last ten years, and today Haut-Bailly is one of Bordeaux’s most respected vineyards. Wine critic Robert Parker has called Haut-Bailly “…one of the most ethereal and elegant wines of Bordeaux,” and recent vintages have scored in the mid-90s. The winning bidder will spend four nights at the chateau, which is ideally located for sightseeing or relaxation. (For 2 couples or a family of 4. Stay is Monday through Friday in spring or September 2009. Breakfast included.) Courtesy of Château Haut-Bailly.

Estimated Value: Inestimable

Alexis Rockman’s work melds a long-term interest in scientific illustration with a technique that allows his materials to combine in such a way that the act of painting both resembles and mimics the interaction of weather and landscape. Much of his recent work, including El Mirage, is inspired by a 12-day ocean voyage from the tip of South America to the Antarctic Peninsula. Rockman’s massive seven-panel work South, currently on exhibit at MASS MoCA, is a diaristic work about his Antarctic journey. The artist has had recent solo exhibitions at CAC Cincinnati, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Camden Art Centre (London), and the Wexner Center for the Arts. His works are in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney. Gift of Alexis Rockman.

Estimated Value: $11,000

Study: Northern City Renaissance; Newcastle, England (Mass MoCA #79-E), 2008
Acrylic and Digital Print
9 7/8 × 14 7/8 inches
Framed

In a 2005 profile, Fortune magazine called Stephen Hannock “the most accomplished and well-connected painter you’ve never heard of.” Since then, word is getting out about his luminous vistas with text, and his canvases are prized by collectors (Steve Tisch, William Lauder, and Tom Brokaw, among others), as well as the Whitney, the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and the National Gallery of Art. In 1998, Hannock became the first museum-collected artist to win an Oscar—he created the “Painted World” for What Dreams May Come starring Robin Williams. Hannock currently has an installation of two large works hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tonight’s work is a study for an 8×12-foot painting that has been commissioned by Sting to commemorate the cultural rebirth of the musician’s hometown. Gift of Stephen Hannock.

Estimated Value: $30,000