SFMOMA patrons rocked 75th birthday bash

17 May 2010

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The SFMOMA gala called for "creative attire." London art dealer Ivor Braka (left), in Alice Cooperesque eye makeup, with gallerist John Berggruen.

(San Francisco Chronicle)

Nearly 1,200 glittering guests feted the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's first seventy-five years on Friday. The art museum hosted 550 gallerists, museum directors, artists and art collectors at a $50,000-a-table private dinner and several hundred more patrons came for the late night afterparty.

Beleaguered billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, 26, whose Facebook is under fire for privacy issues, arrived dressed in a zipped hoodie. He joined luminaries such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the new director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeffrey Deitch; and former Secretary of State George Shultz whose wife, Charlotte, is a SFMOMA Trustee.

The family of Gap retail founders Doris and the late Don Fisher were well-represented. The Fisher family has leased 1,100 artworks to SFMOMA for which the museum is building a new wing.

The party underscored for some that San Francisco is "the center of the world, for art, for technology, financial services, arts and architecture," Robin Vouseden of Gagosian Gallery in London boldly told the San Francisco Chronicle. "The energy is here, it feels young and ambitious and has totally great art and totally great collectors."

Read more at San Francisco Chronicle

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