Kim Kardashian, Leonardo DiCaprio Attend LACMA Art + Film Gala 2017
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s seventh annual Art + Film Gala is about as starry of a gala as one can find in L.A., but even the most successful events need to change it up every once in a while.
This year the lavish party, presented by Gucci, flipped the script and welcomed guests through the back side of the museum rather than its main entrance. Instead of winding their way through Chris Burden’s iconic “Urban Light” installation, guests entered into a palm-filled garden that was walled off from public view.
That meant that the likes of Kim Kardashian, Brad Pitt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jane Fonda, Kerry Washington, Jared Leto, Barbra Streisand, Amy Adams, Dakota Johnson, Naomi Campbell, Rosie Hungtinton-Whitely and Charlotte Casiraghi could mingle somewhat privately.
What didn’t change were the evening’s co-chairs — Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio — and the tradition of honoring one artist and one filmmaker — this year Mark Bradford and George Lucas. Bradford’s exhibit “Pickett’s Charge,” at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., opens in a couple of days, but he was as relaxed as ever in his Gucci made to order tux, necessary because he’s six-foot-eight.
Lucas, meanwhile, is opening a musuem of his own in Los Angeles, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is scheduled to open in 2021. “I now realize what a hard job it is to run a museum,” he said, giving props to LACMA chief executive officer and director Michael Govan. Washington, a good friend of Lucas’ wife Mellody Hobson, introduced the filmmaker, dating herself by saying she was born the year “Star Wars” came out and joked that she wasn’t sure if her father loved her or the movie more.
Several power directors came to pay homage to Lucas, including Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo Del Toro and Lee Daniels, who all sat together. The “movie stars” were mostly seated together at one long table on the other side of the glass pavillion.
“I thought that was Kendall for a minute,” Melanie Griffith told Kris Jenner, as she glanced at Soko with her center-parted black bob. Kim Kardashian was Jenner’s only daughter in attendance and she was sporting extra-long blonde locks for the night.
Absent was Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, who is at work on a top-secret multimedia project that comes out in October of next year. He was said to be in Italy with the “talent.”
After Annie Lennox regaled the crowd by performing five of her greatest hits at the piano, it was time to retreat. Amy Adams was one of the first to make it out to the valet, where she made a late-night connection.
“You don’t know me, but I know you. I’m Amy. I’m a big fan,” she told actress Jamie Gertz as she was getting into her car. “I’m a big fan of yours,” said Gertz. “Right back at you,” said Adams, adding, “I don’t normally call people I don’t know by their first name.”
Launch Gallery: LACMA Art + Film Gala 2017
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