MAD Ball Celebrates 4 Art and Design Visionaries
Arriving at New York’s Pier 60 event space on Tuesday night, the room was awash in a sea of color. This was the 2014 MAD Ball, previously called the Museum of Arts and Design’s Visionaries gala. And in the last year, much more than the name of the annual gala has changed. A new director Glenn Adamson has risen into prominence, having been instated as of September 2013. The museum has hosted its first biennial, the “NYC Makers” exhibition in the summer. It has explored new 21-century media in “Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital.” Even the 500-strong crowd at the ball seemed new and fresh, as the evening’s emcee struggled to call everyone to their seats.
The museum honored 4 outstanding leaders in the design community: Michael Aram, whose company just celebrated 25 years; artist Richard Dupont; gallerist and collector Barry Friedman; and the company Ligne Roset. In videos, the four honorees (Ligne Roset represented by Antoine Roset) lauded the efforts of modern-day makers and reflected on the evolution of craft. Dupont perhaps spoke with the most poetic fortitude as he said, “Aesthetics is the vehicle of communication. It is extremely important to be a creator in a time when makers are rarer. There is a spiritual world in objects that we still need to tap into.”
As the museum moves into the coming year, we can count on it promoting and exploring our unquestionable link to objects and their design.
