The go-to guy for art-world galas

Ben Bourgeois will stage the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's gala celebration Sept. 25 launching the new Stewart and Lynda Resnick Exhibition Pavillion, and it's hardly the first time he's had such a high-profile assignment.

In soirees at the Louvre, the Annenberg Center for Photography and LACMA's own Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Bourgeoise has brought what LAMCA trustee Jane Nathanson calls his trademark "wow moment" to the public unveiling of new art-world facilities.

Look for more "wow" at the celebration of the new $54-million Renzo Piano building on mid-Wilshire Boulevard -- but you're unlikely to get details from Bourgeoise in advance.

"Do you want me to lose my job?" he asked Suzanne Muchnic when she asked him for some advance tidbits. More about this behind-the-scenes figure in art-world galas, read Suzanne's story in Sunday's Arts and Books section.

-- Kelly Scott

Above: Bourgeois at the Resnick Pavilion at LACMA. Credit: Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times

 

Comments

[Donald Frazell]

LOL!!! Duran Duran, how priceless! A perfectly meaningless and shallow group for its equivalent, a buncha losers who created our economic disaster, revealing their lack of soul. And true intelligence, which is making connections between supposedly unrelated things. They just make money, off Bush tax cuts.

Another example that art has become the social page, it has nothing to do with defining humanity, exploring nature and searching for god, uniting us as a common humanity. The highest common denominator. Instead, it is all about decadent fashion and party. And obviously incredibly bad taste. For those who cant be to thin or too rich. LOL!!!

art collegia delenda est!