At New York’s Tribeca Ball, Stilt Walkers Mingle With Celebrities

There are at least as many galas in New York as there are days in a year. Pass by Cipriani 42nd Street or Gotham Hall any night of the week and you are bound to see more than a few of Manhattan’s do-gooders donning their black-tie and clinking champagne flutes in the name of a charitable cause. In a philanthropic landscape that is as vast and varied as the city itself, standing out can be a challenge. One annual party, however, continues to stun year after year: the New York Academy of Art’s Tribeca Ball.

The NYAA has a history of being a scrappy outlier. Founded in 1982 by a group of artists including Andy Warhol, the school’s original mission was to foster classical technique, figurative art, and critical discourse at a time when New York’s art world was more interested in conceptual art and abstraction. The Academy started in a rented-out space in a church basement on Lafayette Street, and when Andy Warhol passed away in 1987, he left a bequest to the Academy, allowing it to purchase its 111 Franklin Street headquarters in Tribeca. As with any non-profit arts institution, it became clear that fundraising for the NYAA would be crucial to the maintenance of its building, as well as the Academy’s survival and continued growth. In 1994, they organized the first Tribeca Ball.

The idea of the Tribeca Ball has generally remained more or less the same over the last twenty-four years—always held in the Franklin Street building, it starts with a cocktail hour where NYAA students welcome patrons into their studios to observe and perhaps purchase their work, then is followed by a glamorous dinner in the first-floor “Cast Hall,” where a collection of of 19th century plaster casts are on permanent loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At first blush, it might sound like Tribeca Ball is basically a fancy school art fair, and in some ways it is. The opportunity to meet directly with art students (and scoop up some of their early works at a fraction of what they might be worth some day) is immensely attractive for art collectors. It’s one of the reasons that the event attracts such luminaries as Naomi Watts, who is also on the Academy’s board. “It’s unlike any other gala in New York, because you get to see over 100 artists at work,” Watts told Vogue. “I love walking through the students’ studios and chatting with the artists, and I’ve bought some fabulous paintings over the years.”

The event’s list of past honorees includes Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham (the parents of Lena Dunham), Peter Brant, Michael and Eva Chow, and Bob Colacello. The list of attendees who have supported Tribeca Ball is equally star-studded—Bill Clinton, Justin Timberlake, Cindy Sherman, Solange Knowles, Diane Von Furstenberg, Mary-Kate Olsen, Martha Stewart, Inez & Vinood, and Padma Lakshmi, just to name a few. Even Real Housewives of New York’s Countess Luann made a cameo last year.

This is a party where Martha Stewart might encounter a shirtless male model on stilts. Where artists live-sketch nude models, showing off their Academy-learned skills and titillating the crowd in the process (this is, after all, an institution devoted to figurative art). And best of all, having a controlled crowd of heavy-hitting art patrons all in one room means that things can get pretty funky—last year, for example, Naomi Watts and Brooke Shields donned Will Cotton cotton candy crowns and walked around dinner eliciting bids during the live auction (and their scheme worked, raising $55,000 in just two minutes).

This year’s Tribeca Ball, on April 9th, is themed “Poetic Astronomy.” The Academy’s hallways and classrooms will be transformed with ceilings of lights shaped like constellations, stilt walkers dressed as moons and stars, artists sketching scantily-dressed modes in “celestial wear,” and tarot card readers. The duo behind viral Twitter account Astro Poets will be on hand to write poems based on guests’ astrological signs. Every room of the building is used—over 5 stories with more than 100 artist studios. Offices are turned into model dressing rooms, the printshop becomes a performance space, and guests wind their way through the entire labyrinth.

For the first time in the event’s history, the waiting list for tickets was so long that the Academy decided to hold a satellite dinner across the street at Tribeca restaurant Tutto Il Giorno. But despite the event’s slightly larger footprint this year, don’t expect it to lose its unique, exclusive character. But despite its growing profile, the event’s ultimate focus is still on championing figurative art. “That’s what we’re all about,“ explains Angharad Coates, a spokesperson for the Academy. “People being like, ‘Um, what am I looking at? Oh, naked people. Cool.’”