MASS MoCA Fundraiser: Beyond Büchel

Calmer Times at MASS MoCA
MASS MoCA is trying to move beyond its recent trials by opening, later this month, an exhibition of new projection works (above) by Jenny Holzer. To help get back on its financial feet, it’s counting on the kindness of friends like Robert Rauschenberg, Chuck Close, Jasper Johns and Meryl Streep.
Those luminaries are among the donors of art and/or time to MASS MoCA’s benefit auction next Wednesday in New York. (The benefit party is sold out, but absentee bidding, using an online form, is open.) Rauschenberg has donated not only a lithograph, but also a two-night stay at his beach house on Captiva Island, Florida, and tours of his and Darryl Pottorf‘s studios on their Captiva compound. “The winning bidder will have dinner with Rauschenberg, Pottorf, and their gallerists Jane and Henry Eckert at the enigmatic Mad Hatter restaurant….Total Package Value: Inestimable.”
Or you can visit the Long Island City studio of sculptor Don Gummer, whose “Primary Separation” is installed at MASS MoCA, and enjoy dinner for six at a restaurant with Gummer and his celebrated wife, Meryl Streep. “Dinner includes six hard-to-find, spectacular wines.” Will Streep do her best Anna Wintour impersonation?
The North Adams, MA, institution is going to need some heedless, well-heeled bidders to help it climb out of the financial hole created by Debacle Büchel. Speaking of which, one of the artist’s attorneys, Art Law Blog-ger Donn Zaretsky, has just informed me that his client is still awaiting U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor‘s written decision, formalizing his Sept. 21 oral ruling in favor of MASS MoCA. Once that is handed down, Zaretsky said, Büchel will make “a final decision on the [possible] appeal.”