Park Avenue Armory.

Art world heavy hitters Agnes Gund, Ronald and Jo Carole Lauder, Lisa and David Schiff, and Aby Rosen and Samantha Boardman are a few of the hosts of the preview of The Art Show, which is celebrating 25 years at the Park Avenue Armory and benefiting the Henry Street Settlement. The show represents over 70 of the nation’s leading galleries with paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and photographs, all under one big roof. Dorsey Waxter, the president of the Art Dealers Association of America, promises pieces in “all price ranges,” but don’t expect a Damien Hirst dot painting for pennies. This is where deep-pocketed collectors convene to freshen up the walls of their Park Avenue pads with big-ticket masterpieces.

Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, (212) 616-3930, 5:30pm-9:30pm, tickets range from $150 for a “Sponsor Preview” to $2,000 for a “Millennium Circle Preview.”

Agnes Gund (Getty Images)

We got goodies for some of those on our gift list at the Pier Antiques Show this past weekend, but those who deserve something a little more, well, contemporary have yet to be crossed off. That’s why we’re dropping in on the Independent Curators International benefit auction, where works by the likes of Olaf Breuning and Ellen Phelan are on the block (along with a stay in St. Barts and a weekend in Newport). The art of socializing will be well-represented as well, as philanthropist and art patron Agnes Gund presents an award to Russian magazine editrix Dasha Zhukova.

The Prince George Ballroom, 15 East 27th Street, honoree hour at 6:30pm, auction with cocktails, food and dancing at 7:30pm, tickets and information can be found at http://tinyurl.com/8dayNov19.

“We’re looking for younger people who are really ready to commit themselves to being involved with P.S.1 and being satisfied with that, who don’t see MoMA as the place to maybe be on the board of over something like P.S.1,” Ms. Gund said.

She added: “My ambition is to see [P.S.1] come alive again the way it was under Alanna, and really be a place that is a destination for people. It already is for younger people and artists, but we have to really get a more mixed crowd.”

Reached for comment at her studio on Tuesday, Ms. Anderson said that she initially hesitated when Mr. Biesenbach asked her to join the board. “I’m not so good on boards, frankly, because I’m usually out of town on a tour, but I love thinking of what institutions should or could do,” Ms. Anderson said. “I love P.S.1 and I have for several decades. I don’t know what Klaus has in mind for it, but, you know, I think he’s really open to a lot of different things.”

“P.S.1 is really the hotbed in New York for the next generation of artists, and that’s really something I wanted to get involved with,” said Mr. Kimmel. “Klaus has really big shoes to fill with Alana and I think he’s bringing her spirit and his own, and it’s a beautiful thing.”

None of the other new board members, nor Mr. Biesenbach, could be reached for comment yesterday.

lneyfakh@observer.com

Citing cost issues, designers Betsey Johnson and Carmen Marc Valvo have decided against staging shows in the Bryant Park tents at this Feburary's Fashion Week. [WSJ via Racked]

Unsurprisingly, heiress Agnes Gund regrets telling W that she thinks many of the people she sits with on the Museum of Modern Art board are cheap. [P6]

Contrary to earlier reports that he wasn't after his ex-wife's money, Guy Ritchie will walk away from his divorce from Madonna with $76 million to $92 million. [Us Weekly] 

Mort Zuckerman says he'd never heard of disgraced investor Bernard Madoff until last Friday, when a third party investor informed him that Mr. Madoff had lost $30 million from a charitable trust he runs. [Daily Intel]

Scarlett Johansson is suing the UK Cosmopolitan for fabricating an interview with her in its August 2008 issue. [Us Weekly]

Honorees included Wallis Annenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Anna Deavere Smith, and, as a sort-of wrinkle-reducer, the musician John Legend.

Also on hand were Ronald Lauder, Jessye Norman, C. Terry Lewis, Mayor David Dinkins and Jeffrey Sachs. Yoko Ono was jet-lagged, but she made it, too.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived minutes before he was to go on stage, while people were picking at their first course. He said:

“New York City is indeed the cultural capital, and anybody who doesn't think so, I'll be happy to meet them out back. Although they may have to deal with our lawyers and a couple professional boxers. Anyways, I can talk about the 500 art galleries that we have in this city, or the 330 dance companies, or the 150 museums, or the 96 orchestras, not to mention Fantasia! Who knows what Fantasia is? Fantasia is the amazing seventeen-foot Burmese python at the Brooklyn Children's Museum. I'm sure our cultural affairs commissioner Kate Levin would be happy if I did all of that, mentioned all of those things. But tonight is really about the honorees.

“First, congratulations to all of them, including all of my colleagues at the United States Conference of Mayors, who do great work not just in the arts but in areas like education, affordable housing and particularly in fighting the scourge of illegal guns on our streets.

“I would, of course, be remiss if I didn't mention that the 106th mayor of the City of New York is sitting right down in front of me. And the reason I mention that is, take a rare look at him, there he is in his tuxedo as opposed to in his normal tennis outfit! It is a rare night for Mr. Dinkins.

“Americans for the Arts is a great organization with a simple message: art asked for more. And we all know how that works, and tonight here is somebody who has been asked for a lot more, a lot more actually each time she has given. Wallis Annenberg is one of our nation's most influential philanthropists. I might also point out that she is one of the most engaging women that this country has. She is a wonderful woman. She is the arts patron of the Arts Foundation and her leadership has made a huge difference in such areas as education, social justice and the environment, and equally important, she had me over to dinner the last time I was in Los Angeles and I can tell you the chicken was wonderful. And if I don't say nice things about Wallis, I won't get invited back.

“Seriously, tonight we honor Wallis for all her contributions to the arts. She has taken her father's philanthropic legacy and expanded it westward and strengthened a thriving cultural community in southern California, and at the same time, her advocacy and generosity is still felt here in the East.

“A long time supporter of the Museum of Modern Art, she recently became active on its board, where she works very closely with another great philanthropist, Aggie Gund. Aggie, where are you? Aggie is here tonight. Another great philanthropist, Vartan Gregorian is here. If anybody needs any money, the Carnegie Foundation has plenty of it. Just give him a call. Seriously, the Annenbergs have continued to serve a wide range of cultural institutions in our city, and that's why we were pleased to honor the foundation with a Mayor's Award for Arts and Culture in 2005. And Wallis's passion for the arts and arts education really is second-to-none, but don't just take it from me, so we brought in some friends with the miracle of technology. Just watch the screen…”

Ms. Gund was talking to The Observer during a recent phone conversation, describing what she imagines it will be like to do the unimaginable: leave her cozy New York home and head to suburban Ohio to trawl for votes for John Kerry. This will be a new experience for Ms. Gund, who is known as a prominent art collector and heir to an impressive family fortune built on banking, beer and Sanka coffee. Though she grew up in Cleveland and has given generously to Democratic causes, volunteering with a grassroots organization like America Coming Together (A.C.T.) and knocking on doors is a different matter. As she said, "It’s not something I would usually do." But this contentious campaign season has turned even the mildest-mannered voters into amateur activists—on both sides of the aisle—and so in late October, with tears or without them, Ms. Gund will head to Ohio.

"I guess I just feel very strongly that this has been a very harsh, disquieting Presidency. I think the war was a real mistake, I’m very frightened by the debt, and I think our health-care system needs help," Ms. Gund explained. "So I’m planning to go [to Ohio] and do door-knocking or whatever they need me to do."

Ms. Gund will be in familiar company. As the election enters its final stretch, some of the city’s most prominent movers and shakers have begun signing up for this strange new ritual. Working with groups like A.C.T., they have become unlikely foot soldiers in a growing grassroots movement, leaving their cushy urban cocoons for weeks at a time to wrangle votes for John Kerry.

For instance, Sarah Kovner, a longtime fixture of the Democratic fund-raising circuit, has already made two pilgrimages to Pennsylvania to register voters with A.C.T. Lisa Perry, the wife of hedge-fund guru Richard Perry, recently helped organize an excursion to a middle-class Philadelphia suburb to help get out the women’s vote (the trip, which was sponsored by NARAL, was canceled at the last minute because of bad weather, but Ms. Perry and her friends have the option to go again in two weeks). And Daniel Menaker, the editor in chief of Random House, said he plans to spend the last week of the election knocking on doors in Ohio, perhaps the most hotly contested of the battleground states.

It’s as if New York’s Democratic elite, which has historically preferred schmoozing with each other at fund-raisers to schmoozing with other voters, has been struck by some curious kind of civic-duty contagion. All of a sudden, they love Ohio. Pennsylvania has become the hot new weekend getaway. And Florida is once again at the top of their vacation lists, besting such exotic resort spots as Anguila and St. Barths. Not since Sissy Spacek starred as Loretta Lynn in 1980’s Coal Miner’s Daughter have so many New Yorkers cared so much about what happens in the heartland. But as John Kerry continues to struggle in the polls, and the election boils down to a few battleground states, Manhattan’s movers and shakers have decided it’s time to take matters into their own hands—and head for the Rust Belt.

"I personally have never seen anything like this," said Sarah Kovner. "You never used to go out to dinner with friends and hear them say, ‘How do I go register people to vote?’"

Of course, along with the high-society types, young Hollywood will be touring the hinterland too, popping up in small towns and gladhanding voters who only know them from the big screen. "I didn’t even know where Cleveland was before, but now I really love Ohio!" said actor and producer Fisher Stevens, who made his first trip to the Buckeye State this summer. "My state, New York, is going to go Democratic, but Ohio is key. If we can get the northeastern part of the state, basically Kerry can win Ohio. So I’m just trying to do my little part, so to speak."

For Mr. Stevens, that means teaming up with his old buddy Chad Lowe and getting some of their actor-friends, like Juliana Margulies, David Duchovny, Marisa Tomei and indie-film vixen Cristina Ricci, to join them on a bus tour through Ohio on Oct. 2 and 3. Working with a group called Bring Ohio Back, they plan to go door-to-door registering voters, handing out fact sheets and perhaps signing an autograph or two. And if the actors somehow miss a few voters along the way, they can rest assured that several hundred other New Yorkers will also be traipsing across the state that weekend with A.C.T., Downtown for Democracy and the Empire State Pride Agenda, New York’s largest gay-rights group. The Pride Agenda is heading directly (and rather boldly) for the famously gay- un friendly city of Cincinnati. (Cincinnati is the only city in the country which permits discrimination based on sexual orientation.)

"On a very basic note, we’re doing this because gays have been attacked by this administration, and what do you do when you get attacked? Fight back," said the Pride Agenda’s executive director, Alan Van Capelle. "Besides, I hear Ohio is just beautiful in the fall; it’s no Paris in springtime, but the boys have just come back from Fire Island and they’re looking for things to do on the weekend, and this is exactly what we need them to do. Ohio is going to become the gay destination site of this campaign!"

But Ohio will also become the Republican destination site. The G.O.P. and a small armada of right-wing groups like the National Rifle Association and the College Republicans will be all over the Rust Belt in the coming weeks doing their part to swing voters toward Mr. Bush. Like their Democratic counterparts, these groups have been working hard to get out the vote in battleground states, building a network of volunteers that stretches from Texas to Minnesota, California to New York. Already, New York’s young, college Republican set have begun plotting out weekend excursions to Pennsylvania in October to mobilize voters. And during the three days before Election Day, tens and perhaps hundreds of New York Republicans will fan out across the country to "pull" voters as part of the G.O.P.’s 72-hour program—much as they did in 2000 to obvious effect.

That year, the Republican voter-turnout effort far surpassed the Democratic drive. But this year the Democrats are catching up, and key to their success is a multimillion-dollar voter-mobilization operation like A.C.T. urging people to grab their clipboards and head for the heartland. Throughout the last year, A.C.T. (along with dozens of other 527 organizations) has emerged as a powerful—and controversial—new force on the election landscape. With its millions of dollars in soft-money donations, it has launched voter-turnout operations in 17 swing states and claims to have already mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers. It does not have an official New York office (New York, after all, is expected to go Democratic without much cajoling), but several months ago Ms. Kovner set up a volunteer outpost in midtown to connect uppity New Yorkers to A.C.T.’s battleground operations. The result is a kind of activist travel agency, where Ms. Kovner and several of her well-connected friends hook volunteers up with housing, transportation and, of course, a canvassing gig in a swing state. (Ms. Kovner’s helpers include the artist Kathryn McAuliffe and philanthropist Anne Hessy.)

"So far we have commitments from 210 people who are spending a minimum of a week in a swing state, and we’re still getting between 10 and 15 calls a day," Ms. Kovner told The Observer. On a recent Thursday evening, some 60 people—middle-age professionals and white-haired retirees, by and large—crammed into an airy Soho loft for a recruitment meeting to learn about volunteering with A.C.T.

On the official front, the Democratic National Committee is making new demands of their supporters. According to Alan Solomont, a close Kerry friend and chairman of the party’s Battleground Victory Fund, the D.N.C. and the Kerry campaign are organizing the largest voter-mobilization drive in the party’s history. And several Kerry supporters have reported that during finance-committee conference calls, they’re not only asked to donate money these days, they’re asked to donate time—for door-knocking.

These overtures have met with a mix of reactions from the campaign’s big rainmakers, from genuine enthusiasm to polite indifference to spluttering horror. "I assure you, I’m not leaving New York to go knock on doors," supermarket magnate John Catsimatides told The Observer. "I can urge my friends to go and raise money to help Pennsylvania [with its voter drive], but I am not doing it myself."

But Robert Zimmerman, another active fund-raiser and Democratic National Committeeman, said he was happy to head out to the swing zones. "I’m going to be knocking on doors in battleground states in October," he said.

Of course, the big question is whether any of this will make a difference when Election Day rolls around in six weeks. Can a bunch of New Yorkers—no matter how zealous—really wrangle enough votes for Mr. Kerry to pull him out of the hole he seems to have fallen into this past month? And what about that New York attitude of theirs? Can a troupe of well-heeled Gothamites actually connect enough with suburban Clevelanders or inner-city Philadelphians to change their minds? Or will they inadvertently turn them off? (In what might amount to a tacit acknowledgment of this danger, NARAL’s New York office sent an e-mail to volunteers warning them "not to wear clothing that advertises we are coming in from New York" when canvassing in Pennsylvania.)

For all the unknowns, New Yorkers keep volunteering, keep shoving off for those distant swing states whose locals may or may not care if they even show up. And in a way that makes sense. Because in the end, the ones who benefit most from this new voter-turnout craze might not be the voters but the volunteers themselves who can head out to swing states and feel like they’re making a difference, like they’re doing something, while they wait to see if Mr. Kerry can regain his footing in the election.

Take Jane O’Connor, a writer and editor at Penguin USA, who volunteered to head down to Philadelphia to register voters with NARAL on a recent Saturday morning. "This is something I haven’t done since 1968 when I ‘got clean for Gene’ and went up to New Hampshire for the primaries," she said, as rain battered the charter bus that was to take her to Philadelphia. "But I’m doing it now because I’m worried about the outcome of this election."

Ms. O’Connor had gotten up bright and early to get a seat on the bus, so she was understandably disappointed when she learned the trip was canceled at the last minute because of stormy weather. Still, she managed to find the bright side. "Well, I guess I can feel virtuous at least for having tried to come today," she said with a shrug. Five minutes later, she was happily ensconced at a table at Balthazar, eating breakfast.