AROUND TOWNTHIS MONTH HOLD THE HARDWARE/CUTLER'S KLEE AND PHILLIPS' GLEE/TEA FOR TWENTY/GENTLEMEN START YOUR PIANOS/PICTURE THIS
HOLD THEHARD WARE Jean Angulo, for 12 years the
Ambassadors Ball shepherdess, has
now stepped down, the first major
change in this long running (28
years) event since its dress code
changed from white-tie to black.
Earlier, the white-tie-invitation
phrase "Decorations will be worn" always brought out the heavy-metal troops, who - bedecked in ribbons and medallions, and festooned with chains - clanked their way through the evening. CUTLER'S KLEE AND PHILLIPS'GLEE Georgetown's B.J. Cutler and his wife, art critic and author Carol, have delighted Phillips Collection officials with the gift of a Paul Klee. The painting hung on the walls of their Paris home when B.J. was the editor of the International Herald Tribune. Carol, who has also written awardwinning cookbooks, is a founder of Washington's Les Dames d'Escoffier, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year with seminars and tributes to women in gastronomy. TEA FOR TWENTY Nancy Dunton, the high bidder on an embassy tea for twenty auctioned at Arts For the Aging's gala last year, gathered friends at the Icelandic embassy residence, presided over by Heba Agustsson, who donated the event. Seen: Doris Dixon, the National Opera Women's Committee president; Julia Hopping, whose Sevilla-Sacasa family home was chosen for the Opera's Decorator Show House this year; Chateau Gardecki, drawing congratulations on a recent party at the Middleburg Steeplechase, which she and husband John carried out in the best champagne tradition; Gertie and Nicole d'Amecourt, Nicole just off to her Florida place; Brenda de Suze, finishing her stint as women's committee head for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and happy that actress Jane Seymour, a painter herself, will be a featured guest at the NMWA Fall Gala; Gamilla Karjawally; and three ambassadors' wives Rim Aboud (Lebanon), Marie- Therese Lowell (Malta) and Cheryl Catarino, of Portugal, who told how a dress she had worn twenty-five years ago wound up in her husband's baggage. Her daughter had long adored the chic little black dress, and surprised Cheryl by saying she wanted to wear it for a posh wedding in London. Cheryl hauled it from its tissue wrappings, and sent it off with her London-bound husband, where it made a second social debut, with a new gold belt. There's nothing like a vintage Bill Blass. GENTLEMEN START YOUR PIANOS Pianists are steadily becoming major players (forgive!) on the Washington scene. Lang Lang, once a Washington Performing Arts breakthrough prodigy - and now world-renowned - made a little history when he offered a piano lesson as an auction item, and it brought $12,000 at the sumptuous WPAS gala earlier this year. (How much is that a minute?)... Eric Himy drew an overflow crowd, (many sat on the floor or left), to an otherwise posh Schuman concert sponsored jointly by Anderson House and Chateau and John Gardecki's Washington International Piano Arts Council... Stanley Babin arrived from New York at the behest of his fan Gertie d'Amecourt to perform at the Thé Dansant Russe arranged by Selene Obolensky. Balalaikas lent background to the tea dance, held at the residence of the Russian ambassador, with proceeds helping fund the Obolensky Boarding School for Special Children in Kaluga, Russia. This state-owned school is on the former family estate of the late Prince Alexis Obolensky, who was buried there in April. A longtime Washingtonian, his family dated from the 12th century Rurik dynasty, long before the 300-year reign of the Romanov's, whom Alexis testily dismissed as "mere upstarts." PICTURE THIS The "Masterworks from the Kelly Collection of American Illustration" were a visual treat at Richard and Mary Kelly's cocktail for the International Eye Foundation. The Kellys have amassed over 300 works, but have space to hang only 60 paintings at a time, even in their huge Great Falls home. By turns dramatic or romantically beautiful, depending on the magazine stories they illustrated, the works were created over a half century by artists including the Wyeths, Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, and Sarah Stillwell Weber. Interestingly, Howard Pyle, known as "The father of illustrative art," was the grandfather of Howard Pyle, husband of the IEF's director, Victoria Sheffield. Sponsors of the event, curated by Elizabeth Alberding, included the family of the corneal transplant pioneer, Dr. John Henry King, founder of the IEF; Susan King Clark, her husband William D. Clark,their son Lawrence and daughter Helen Clark Atkeson.
|
||||||||||||||||||
