She stealthily surveyed the room for prying ears that might take offense to her cheeky observation. Laughing it off and shifting her attention back to us, she continued, “That’s the fun thing about the Parrish. I think because it leans artsy, you can get everything from moo moos to hula skirts.”

We had just entered the museum and taken in the first exhibit. Its white walls were stippled with black-and-white renderings of New York landmarks, a monochrome Flatiron building pictured among its high-rise cohorts.

Ms. Bancroft motioned to the flat screen behind us, which displayed images of the progress of the Parrish’s new $27M, 34,000 square-foot home.

“This is crumbling and charming,” she said, referring to the museum’s current digs. “The other is sleek and yet not über-modern. It really kind of reflects the shingled, weathered kind of East End look.”

Guests scrummed around the screens and surveyed the project, which fostered a buzz about the new building and its fresh aesthetics within the already chatty crowd. The venue, Ms. Bancroft explained, is “artist-endorsed.”

“It’s reminiscent of a studio really,” she added.

When the circulation of cocktails took a brief hiatus, a concerned guest inquired as to where we had nabbed our champagne. After motioning in the direction of a fresh round of drinks emerging from a back room, we queried her on the new museum and whether she’d seen its interior yet.

Unfortunately, she (and several other guests we chatted with throughout the night) had not. Though rumors of a selective hardhat tour had us pondering whether one could get an early peek inside, we later halted our probing when Jay Goldberg, assistant treasurer of the Parrish Art Museum, informed us that only “possible contributors” to the new museum are shown its interior, by the director on Sundays.

“This is kind of a say goodbye to the old museum and say hello to the new one,” he told us of the evening’s festivities.

We shifted our attention to two men in white suits—Tony Ingrao and Randy Kemper, interior designers being honored at the event.

On the accolade, Mr. Kemper said, “It’s interesting because I think interior design is such a big part of art on the East End and I think a lot of the time that’s overlooked. We deal with people with very big art collections. And we actually design the houses around the art collections, so it has a lot to do with art and how people live.”

We turned to Mr. Ingrao, who, in his summer garb, fit in perfectly with the breezily elegant guests. We asked him what he was looking forward to at the event, expecting his response to focus on his role as an honoree.

“Uh, the afterparty,” he answered matter-of-factly. Mr. Kemper chuckled in agreement.

We shifted our attention toward the director of the Parrish, Terrie Sultan, who was dressed in a simple black dress with sheer detailing at the shoulders. (We would meet her designer, Liliana Casabal of Morgane Le Fay, over dinner later.)

“It’s just very important that everybody understand that the creative legacy of the East End of Long Island is all encompassing and in every generation,” Ms. Sultan told The Observer, emphasizing the diverse array of visual artists who attended.

We moved to the second exhibit, a collection of Adam Bartos’s photographs of Long Island life, before making our way to the boozier portion of the evening in a tented garden area.

Seated at a table that bordered the edge of the crowded tent was choreographer Paul Taylor and choreographer/director Patricia Birch.

“I’m the maverick who does a lot of junk,” Ms. Birch divulged sarcastically, poking fun at her varied experience in the arts. “She’s a variety pack,” Mr. Taylor chimed in, laughing.

As we made our way back into the crowd, we spotted the artist Chuck Close seated close to the open bar, donning brightly colored garb and accompanied by his leggy girlfriend.

“Well I no longer live here, but I’m very supportive of Terrie and the museum,” he told us about his being honored at the event.

On the topic of artist-museum relations, we then asked him about John Baldessari’s decision to leave L.A.’s MoCA following the dismissal of the museum’s curator.

“At least they had artists on the board,” Mr. Close told us. “You have to have an artist on the board before they can quit. I was the only artist ever on the board in New York City when I was on the board of Whitney.”

He laughed and continued, “It’s always great, but then they’ll tell you what they think, and they might tell you that you suck.”

He added that Mr. Baldessari’s decision to leave the board is not an unusual choice for artists.

“It’s a struggle for the cultural life of an institution that wants one approach and an artist who wants another,” he told us.

We moved on to a touchier matter: Scott Blake, an up-and-comer in the art realm with a zest for digital art and a knack for ticking off Mr. Close. He is perhaps best known for creating a digital Chuck Close filter, which could transform any image to resemble Close’s trademark pixelated paintings. It was later sacked when he faced the threat of a lawsuit from Mr. Close.

“I’m not going to dig the fire,” Mr. Close told us when we asked about his feelings toward Mr. Blake. “All he wants me to do is react. And if I do react, he’ll quote me and put it in another piece.”

We went more general and probed him about the concept of digital art.

“I made digital art before there was digital art,” Mr. Close told us coyly, a smile stretching upward on his face. “I made it by hand.”

He then motioned to his girlfriend, stationed not far from where we were standing.

“And my girlfriend likes digital art and video art,” he told us. “I love it. It’s not a moral decision, making a painting versus making something digital.”

This seemed true to us, as we left Mr. Close to his evening and waded back into the crowd.

sgrothjan@observer.com

Rangel.

 

Wednesday, August 3

The Ultimate Art Machine

Is the Guggenheim the Shake Shack of museums? Locations, locations, locations! Not content with outposts in the Basque Country and the United Arab Emirates (as well as the now-shuttered Las Vegas outpost, which seems in retrospect a bit of an overreach…to expect real culture to take hold in the land of bilk and money), the Guggenheim is now creating a mobile lab, opening today, that will set up shop in nine cities over six years in a quest to spur discussion on urban life. The slow migration of the auto-company-sponsored BMW Guggenheim Lab (a mobile laboratory isn’t cheap, dears!) begins in New York with the erection of a mobile structure themed around “Confronting Comfort.” (While the Guggenheim Lab is referring to balancing individual desire with the common good, surely you’ll be reminded that a new BMW forces you to “confront comfort” in a whole new way!) Catch it while you can—the mobile lab jaunts to Berlin next, then on to a yet-to-be-announced city in Asia.

BMW Guggenheim Lab, 33 East First Street, opens today from 1-9pm, visit guggenheim.org for more information.

Thursday, August 4

Single-Source Stories

When we hear “Talking Head,” we think rock star/bicycle enthusiast David Byrne, of course—we see that guy everywhere! But some talking heads come on reels, not wheels: the Anthology Film Archives continue their Talking Head screening series of documentary films featuring testimonials from a single individual. The mini-genre’s rife with unreliable narrators and charismatic characters: today brings screenings of The Confessions of Winifred Wagner (about Richard Wagner’s daughter-in-law and her friendship with Adolf Hitler) and Martin Scorsese’s Italianamerican and American Boy (regarding, respectively, his parents and the Taxi Driver actor Steven Prince).

Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, The Confessions of Winifred Wagner at 6:45pm, Italianamerican and American Boy at 9pm, visit anthologyfilmarchives.org for tickets and information.

Friday, August 5

Soundgarden

This weekend, the Shinnecock Indian reservation, in Southampton, is invaded by hordes even wilder than cigarette buyers looking for a tax-free carton. The Escape to New York music festival brings electro-loving ravers in for a weekend spent sleeping in campers (it’s glamorous camping, or “glamping,” for the Sunday Styles set), listening to music and enjoying all the good, clean fun the Hamptons have to offer. Tonight, noted memoirist Patti Smith and girl-group-but-not-in-the-Phil-Spector-way Best Coast perform on the main stage. It’s not just music and glamping (something about that word—we just can’t take ourselves seriously when we say it!): the organizers were responsible for the U.K.’s Secret Garden Party, an annual festival that transforms a manor house’s grounds into what a Telegraph reporter described as “a fairy woodland filled with strange sculptures” and “a Tower of Babel disco.” If this all sounds a bit foreign to you, gentle partygoing reader, know that in bringing a manic all-weekend festival to the States, the organizers adopted one indigenous custom: there will be a massive brunch for all attendees. Glamorous!

Escape to New York runs through August 7, Shinnecock Reservation (Southampton), visit escape2ny.com for tickets and information.

Saturday, August 6

Newport Lights

If you find yourself among the Gilded Age relics in Newport tonight (we mean the mansions, not the social set), contribute to the preservation of one grand home. Once owned by Pennsylvania coal baron Edward Julius Berwind and modeled after a French chauteau, the house at the Elms is fine ($1.4 million in 1901 money could buy you a pretty sturdy house), but its carriage house and stables are in need of a pick-me-up. Tonight’s black-tie dinner dance—whose theme is “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”--will raise money for Newport’s Preservation Society, which plans to turn the stables of The Elms from equine domicile into a historical society devoted to researching the town’s architectural history. Let’s make sure that horsey smell is powerwashed out before the important work of this research center begins!

The Elms, 367 Bellevue Avenue (Newport, R.I.), 7pm, call (401) 847-1000 x120 for reservations.

Sunday, August 7

McQueen for a Day

The Met is open until midnight tonight so that late, late latecomers can check out Alexander McQueen’s wares before the exhibit closes permanently. A night spent experiencing the glories of the museum? We remember that children’s book! Most everyone we know has raved about the Costume Institute show, but we’ve been pretty busy all summer (the Newport mansions can’t save themselves, you know, and there’s pretty intriguing costumery to check out there as well!), and the museum’s been bending over backwards to accommodate busy (lazy!) people like us all summer, with admission on Mondays and now late-night shows. Is any innovation quite so welcome in this go-go city as a museum for the nocturnal? We hope the trend catches on—nothing would lull us to sleep quite like the soft glow of MoMA’s Rothkos. (We do love McQueen, too, but we’re sure those severe, radical clothes will give us a few nightmares!)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, exhibition open until 12am August 6 and 7, visit metmuseum.org for more information.

Monday, August 8

Day for Night

We’re still vicariously embarrassed for dear old drama geek Anne Hathaway in her noble, pathetic attempt to host the Oscars by sheer force of will. She tried so very hard! She laughed at her own jokes to fill cavernous silences! Well, her new film might have put the brakes on her earnest, overbearing schtick and given us the chance to remember why we loved her in the first place. Ms. Hathaway, as a British lady separated from her one true love but for an annual brief encounter, puts her high-school-production-of-Oliver! on for the new film One Day, which she’s fêteing at the red carpet premiere tonight. Do you think Ms. Hathaway’s erstwhile Oscar co-host James Franco would consider it a suitable art project to come as our plus-one?

One Day premiere, an Upper West Side movie palace, screening at 7pm.

Wednesday, August 10

Rangel Me an Invite

It’s Christmas for politicos with the annual Charles Rangel birthday gala (the Congressman was born in June, but that’s not a slow news month that will guarantee headlines!). Planned attendees at the Plaza Hotel bash include Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer—all familiar faces from last year’s bash, which went on during Mr. Rangel’s ethics investigation. Also planning to attend is Aretha Franklin, who’ll sing for the assembled guests: she was supposed to sing last year, but fell and broke her ribs, so Psychic Friend Dionne Warwick turned up instead. Broken ribs are perhaps the only excuse that can keep prominent machers away from the ever-popular Mr. Rangel: “I felt bad—because Aretha felt so bad!,” said Mr. Rangel’s fundraising consultant Darren Rigger, who noted that Ms. Franklin was pleased to make up for her truancy. As for the party--why the Plaza and not, you know, something in Mr. Rangel’s district? “Charlie is iconic,” said Mr. Rigger. “We needed a place that had that same feel—you remember the Black and White Balls, the galas, it sends a powerful message. There’s a lot of places, and I’m not going to say bad things about other places, but this place is iconic for throwing a gala.” Indeed! If Truman Capote were alive today, he’d love nothing more than hanging out with New York politicians.

Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, 6pm-8pm, visit charlierangel.org for tickets and information.

The new Parrish Art Museum under construction

Earlier this month, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton raised $675,000 at its glitzy annual fund-raising gala—the last to take place in its present building. Meanwhile, a few miles away, in Water Mill, the skeleton of the Parrish’s new home, an elegant, barnlike building designed by Swiss starchitects Herzog & de Meuron that’s as long as a city block, has begun to rise by the side of Montauk Highway, next to Duck Walk Vineyards. Days before the Parrish’s gala, the village of Southampton presented to the public for the first time its future plans for an arts center in the Parrish’s present, soon to be former, building on Jobs Lane.

On the afternoon of the gala, Parrish director Terrie Sultan took The Observer on a tour of the museum’s vault, where its collection of over 2,600 artworks is housed. She rolled back floor-to-ceiling racks to reveal paintings by William Merritt Chase, Willem de Kooning and realist Fairfield Porter, of whom she says the museum has the largest collection in the country. (When Porter died in 1975, his widow donated the contents of his studio to the Parrish.) In the new building, set to open next summer, 7,500 of the 12,300 square feet of exhibition space will be dedicated to shows from this permanent collection.

While it’s been scaled back from the Parrish’s original ambitions—an $80 million project by Herzog & de Meuron that would have mimicked the look of artist residences—the new building, a financially more manageable project that was conceived during the recession in 2009, is widely admired. (It’s still nearly double the size of the current building, and its $26.2 million price is 80 percent paid for, with construction proceeding on schedule.) With its capacity for showcasing the permanent collection, it is also meant to inspire growth in the collection: “It’s very hard to solicit works from collectors if you can’t demonstrate that they will be on view,” Ms. Sultan said, adding that “there’s a wish list.” And so far, it seems to be working. In the vault, Ms. Sultan pointed to a recent acquisition—one of Ross Bleckner’s “Architecture of the Sky” paintings still in the bubble wrap in which it was shipped. It’s the first of that series to enter a public institution (Mr. Bleckner had been saving the piece for himself, but changed his mind). Nearby were some Porter paintings that came as gifts. Ms. Sultan also mentioned a recent gift of a Keith Sonnier sculpture.

Museum supporters are eager to see that permanent collection go on regular view. A recent addition to the board of trustees—he joined in December 2009—Manhattan-based lawyer Peter Haveles characterizes himself as “a modest collector”; his children benefited from summer art-education programs at the Parrish. He said he’s excited to see the museum “operate on all of its cylinders” by doing temporary exhibitions and permanent collection shows at the same time; up to now, it’s been either/or. He described his recent visit to the vault with Ms. Sultan as being “like a 6-year-old in a candy store,” and says the typical patron of the Parrish will be excited about seeing the rotating exhibition of Fairfield Porters.

But it’s not just the permanent collection that will be on view once the new building is completed.

“If you’re asking, are we going to be organizing and presenting world-class exhibitions that people will come from all over the world to see, the answer is yes,” Ms. Sultan told The Observer, standing in the museum’s current exhibition of work by Dorothea Rockburne. She added that the museum will be “engaging in an international dialogue on all levels.” She said it’s too early to release information about the opening exhibition, but hinted that it will be of a contemporary artist who has a connection to the East End, and that it will be “the kind of thing where people say, ‘Of course! And why didn’t we think of that?’”

Last September, the museum added a trustee—one of six new board members to join since December 2009—who seemed particularly interested in world-class exhibitions and international dialogue. Adam Sender, who runs the hedge fund Exis Capital Management, has been summering in Sag Harbor, with his family, for the past 15 years. Two weeks before the Parrish gala, he hosted a cocktail party for the museum at his home. Ms. Sultan and Art in America magazine editor Lindsay Pollock, as well as local artists like Michael Halsband and Matthew Satz, toured the spacious house and landscaped grounds, gazing at works by international avant-garde stars, the kinds of pieces you are likely to come across at Art Basel or the Venice Biennale. Mr. Sender is anything but a modest collector. A large white abstract Sol Lewitt sculpture sat on the manicured lawn; a huge Urs Fischer sculpture of a cigarette lighter dominated the living room; across from it hung a giant Damien Hirst butterfly painting; an entire gallery space devoted to pieces made from panty hose and cigarettes by Sarah Lucas was next to the stairwell; light-box photographs by Jeff Wall lit up the dining room; a bright yellow Bruce Nauman neon light tube piece that spells out “Run from fear fun from rear” illuminated an upstairs hallway; there were works by up-and-coming talents like Brendan Fowler, Elad Lassry and Matt Chambers. Mr. Sender employs a personal curator and regularly loans his artworks for exhibitions around the world.

In other words: Fairfield Porter this was not. Alice Aycock, an artist who is known for her earthwork-style sculptures, and who will have a major exhibition of her drawings at the Parrish in 2013, was among the guests at Mr. Sender’s party. “My jaw dropped,” Ms. Aycock told The Observer a week later, describing her reaction to the house, grounds and collection. “I live within walking distance and I had no idea this was there.”

She added, “If people like Adam Sender will get behind the Parrish, then the museum will be cooking with gas.”

“With a building like that, they have the opportunity to do some exciting shows,” said Mr. Sender, referring to the new Herzog & de Meuron structure. He put aside plans to open a private exhibition space for his collection in a disused church in Sag Harbor, joining the Parrish board instead. “Exciting to me means contemporary.”

Mr. Haveles characterized the Parrish’s board, a mixture of full- and part-time residents, as diverse and engaged, but not meddlesome. On the board level, he said, the museum is discussed not as one with aspirations to be a global or national institution, but rather as an important regional one, one that reflects the art of the region and serves the region’s needs, and that will be attractive to people visiting from other parts of the East End, and also to visitors from Manhattan.

Ms. Sultan put the emphasis on the artistic legacy of the East End—ranging from Childe Hassam to Jackson Pollock to Roy Lichtenstein to Chuck Close.  “We are very proud to be a museum in this region,” she said. “It’s one of the only regions like this in the country where the level of contribution from the artists who have an association with this area is as high as it is.”

If the word “regional” comes up often in discussions of the new Parrish, “local” and “pedestrian-oriented” are more likely to be used in descriptions of the village’s plans for its own $20 million project: a hybrid arts complex at the site the Parrish is leaving.

On July 7, the village of Southampton held the first public presentation of plans—four different ones were presented—for the Southampton Center for the Arts. Siamak Samii, chair of the village’s planning commission, told The Observer that part of a master plan for the center of the village is the creation of an arts district, of which the old Parrish site will serve as anchor. It will incorporate visual and performing arts as well as education, and parts of it will be accessible around the clock; the center will be aimed at both summer and year-round residents. (The village’s full time population is 3,000-4,000; in summer it spikes to around 12,000.)

One object of the project, Mr. Samii said, is to “bring residential living into the heart of the village.” In neighboring villages like East Hampton, he said, “commerce and retail” have been the engines of growth. “We want culture to be the engine of growth.”

The arts complex will be fueled by partnerships with cultural institutions, such as museums and theater groups, and educational institutions outside the village that will use the facility as an extension. He said the village has so far reached out to 15 institutions, including the Lincoln Center Film Festival, and responses have been positive.

The Parrish’s lease is up in summer 2012; it plans to have next summer’s gala in its completed building, in Water Mill. Between now and that time, Mr. Samii said, the village will set up boards, bring in a director and fund-raise, with the aim of breaking ground in the next two to three years. Manhattan-based arts consultancy Webb Management Services has put the three-year project, which will create 40,000 square feet of facilities at around $20 million, once the operational costs are factored in.

The village does not see its arts complex competing with the Parrish, but rather complementing it—an “amicable relationship” that, as Mr. Samii described it, could even include the Parrish’s doing loan shows there.

“One of the main elements is to engage some of the local artists even more,” said Mr. Samii. “Local artists who don’t feel they are on the radar of the Parrish. And there are a lot of them.” He added that the facility would ideally be a place “where there would be more interaction between the community and its artists.” It is envisioned as “a place of gathering, a piazza for the center of the village.”

The Parrish, as he put it, “is extending itself to a more international high-profile, high-energy art scene. But we think that should not be at the expense of ignoring the local community.”

sdouglas@observer.com

Liam McMullan, Aesha Waks

"LET ME TAKE YOUR PICTURE," Liam McMullan said. It was late May at the Southampton Social Club, and the lanky 23-year-old stood in front of me with a camera covering his face. He was there on assignment for his father, Patrick McMullan, the house photographer to the city’s social set.

The camera shutter clicked.

“Oh, why don’t you smile?” he implored. “You don’t want to look like that on the site.”

We smiled. Another click.

“That’s good—oh, this is my fiancée, Aesha,” Liam offered, introducing the small-framed woman in a flower-print dress who stood beside him.

When we ran into her again later that day, she was chatty, pretty and porcelain—and she wanted us all to be friends. “You’re the same age as Liam,” she pointed out.

That was Sunday. The first message came on Friday.

“It was nice seeing you. Will probablly be out in Hamptons every weekend n in Rockaway beach where we live,you are welcome2the beach.”

We responded that we would love to drop by.

AESHA WAKS MET LIAM MCMULLAN in May 2009, when she was 31 and he was 21.

“Patrick Matamoros, he’s a vintage clothes guy, really known around downtown,” she recounted. “He had a party I was spinning at one night, and Liam showed up. After that night we kept running into each other every time we went out and every day too.”

For the uninitiated, her crowd was, and still is, a group that tends to have birthday parties covered by the party-photo site Guest of a Guest—all of which is just fine with Ms. Waks.

According to her, she wasn’t looking for a relationship with Liam—“because of the crowds of women and the groupies and the stalkers”—but they fell into together anyway. A month later, they were engaged. Aesha got a “Liam” tattoo and Liam got an “Aesha” tattoo.

The crash pad of choice was Patrick McMullan’s Fifth Avenue apartment, near N.Y.U., where Ms. Waks was taking classes.

“We took over his life,” she said, of her new father figure. “I was literally wearing his boxers to bed every night.”

Ms. Waks had something of a career as an actress—cameras of all sorts seem to exert a pull on her. In the mid-90’s she stared in a few pictures, including Arresting Gena, with then-unknowns Sam Rockwell and Adrien Grenier, in which she played a girl with a mother in a coma. By the aughts she was appearing in ever-smaller roles in ever-smaller films.

Her ambitions have shifted since then, and these days she is in an artistic way. This week, instead of stepping before the camera, her art will be on display at the Town House Art Gallery in Park Slope. The big works are messy and neon, consisting mostly of wooden planks splayed with text and assorted detritus—Page Six cut-outs, cigarette wrappers, party flyers, trash, American flags, JC Penny bags, Patrick McMullan photos, Warholesque axioms, cereal boxes, pictures of Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber with a mustache, Liam McMullan and Aesha Waks.

“We had to look through Patrick’s trash every day while he was recycling, and I found a lot of cool things,” she said. “I started making collages out of his garbage.”

Now, she works out of the home she was raised in, a tumbledown-but-stately 1940’s mansion overlooking the water at Rockaway Beach. The house was built by her grandfather, the walls painted by her mother and the payments settled by her father, who owned a cut-rate women’s clothing store on the main Rockaway strip of 116th Street. He quit town five months ago and went down to Florida with a new girlfriend.

With its cracked marble and creeping rust, the house demands a name, and indeed it has one: “The Mindy.” Its namesake, Ms. Waks’s mother, died in that house, collapsing in the living room after a stroke and falling into a coma from which she would not awaken. “She had serious tumors at this point, and she’d literally fall down the stairs in the middle of the night because she couldn’t even walk,” she remembered dolefully. “And I would have to pick her up at 4 in the morning from the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ I’d ask. And she’d say, ‘I’m going down to the guest room to print out pictures of pink flamingos to paint tomorrow.’”

After a sticky hour on the train to Rockaway Beach, The Observer tucked himself into the back of Mr. McMullan’s gray jalopy. Ms. Waks, wearing a dandelion dress she bought from her father’s store and colossal black sunglasses, rode shotgun. A plan was made for a cookout.

We arrived at a narrow driveway, a tongue of pavement rolling out from the split-level house. A defunct fountain, tiled with swirling prisms of color, stood out front, and iron war figurines dotted the stone staircase to the door. A red awning hung above the front door.  Inside came a wash of orange sherbet walls and paintings done in the old style, by Ms. Waks’s mother—a painting of Victorians with golden mirrors and men in riding pants nursing cocktails. The house’s spaces spilled out onto a deck, and beyond that was a pool filled with a foot or two with bulbous green gunk.

Inside, Liam jiggered a nugget of weed into a one-hitter.

The Observer walked to the window to take in the view.

“The city skyline, you can hold it in your hand,” Ms. Waks noted.

We squinted at Manhattan, focusing through the fog.

“Let’s fire up the grill,” came the suggestion.

It had been announced several times that despite Liam’s strict veganism Ms. Waks gleefully consumes meat.

“I got myself over borderline anorexia,” she said, after the tiny burner produced a sufficient flame. “Since then, I’ve been doing health consulting.”

She has a book in the works, The Model Body, that will promote proper eating and fitness with pictures of beautiful women—all shot, of course, by Patrick McMullan.

“These are the girls that people get anorexic over,” she said, dragging on a cigarette. “I want to fix that.”

Soon, a crowd filled the living room: Ms. Waks’s brother, her brother’s girlfriend, her brother’s girlfriend’s kid, the kid’s friends, the guys fixing the pool, the pool guy’s buddies.  She suggested a tour of the house. Her bedroom was a disaster, clothes and canvases and guitars spilling out over the mottled carpet. Some of her collages hung on hooks beside her bed; others, packed away for the trip to Brooklyn, for the next week’s exhibition. There were printouts of McMullan shots on the walls, including one of Ms. Waks with Liv Tyler.

She explained that her mother too was an artist. “Something like this is what she did when she was sick,” she said, holding up a work rendered in cobalt-ash smearings. “She wasn’t trying to be a cool abstract artist, it’s so strange.

“And then she did this of my grandmother,” she said, pulling out one of her mother’s portraits, a more conservative style, from before the tumors started. Ms. Waks began to tear up. Immediately behind the minicanvas, we noticed, was a copy of Patrick McMullan’s Kiss Kiss, his collection of celebrities locking lips, with Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson on the cover.

“When are you and Liam going to get married?” we enquired.

“We’re waiting—right now we have a couple of sponsors and TV shows talking to us,” she replied. “Who knows? Maybe Tori Spelling will throw it for me. She has her wedding show.”

She paused.

“Who’s helping me put it together? I don’t have a mom, my grandmother’s in Florida, she just got over getting ill. It’s just, like, how am I supposed to do this on my own?”

"IS THIS THE AESHA WAKS SHOW?" asked a frumpy man in his late 20’s. It was a Monday evening, on the corner of Second Street and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope.

Inside, the Town House Art Gallery was empty, but for two people.

Ms. Waks’s collages occupied much of the wall space. They consisted of New York Post clippings, barcodes, hair ties, sparkly plastic jewelry, the word “MONEY” big and sideways. Mr. McMullan had designed postcards to accompany the show. “Aesha’s hope is to continue the legacy of Andy Warhol and create a new factory,” the text read. The reverse side featured a patchwork chaos, in the middle of which was a cover of Artnews, that asked “Who Are the Great Women Pop Artists?” The name “Aesha Waks” appeared directly underneath.

“You made it!” Aesha enthused as she walked in, Mr. McMullan in tow, camera around his neck.

“Go stand over there,” he ordered, “I want to take a picture of you two.”

He pointed out a collage featuring images of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Mario and Luigi, a symmetrical banner printed from a page from Guest of a Guest—and, naturally, Liam McMullan and Aesha Waks.

Mr. McMullan raised his camera once again, obscuring his face.

“Smile,” he said.

We did, and the camera shutter clicked.

It has seemed throughout this Wall Street debacle that the most powerful have eluded disgrace. John Thain, whose problems at Merrill Lynch were not limited to a $68,000 credenza, was put in charge of the giant lender CIT this February, for example. A month later, Jon Corzine, pushed out of Goldman Sachs, was made CEO of a brokerage. And last week, Robert Rubin, whose years at the Treasury and then Citigroup made him a symbol of deregulation and excess, and whose affair with a former trader was detailed this spring on the Huffington Post, announced his new investment-bank job. Even Steven Rattner, the private-equity guru caught in New York State's massive pension fund scandal, is writing a book and awaiting his comeback.

Mr. Cioffi is not.

Once a legitimate heavyweight of the hedge fund world, he was arrested just after dawn on a summer morning two years ago, handcuffed between two F.B.I. agents. In what is still the only serious criminal case of the financial crisis, Mr. Cioffi and a colleague were put on trial for defrauding investors, who lost $1.6 billion when the subprime bubble burst.

As the newspapers put it, the collapse of his funds, which he had told clients were in fine shape, set off a chain reaction that eventually swallowed Bear Stearns itself. Mr. Cioffi was also charged with insider trading, having moved some of his own money from the funds before the end.

Last November, they were both found not guilty. "The entire market crashed. You can't blame that on two people," a juror said afterward. "How much can two men do?"

In his first public comments since then, Mr. Cioffi, 54, described his life after the fall. He and his family have sold off their New Jersey house and are renting nearby, but plan to move to Naples, Fla., near his parents. He cannot find work, but he has set up shop managing his own money in the two-floor office complex. "I'm not in a bad place. I'm in a good place," he said. "I mean, I certainly would have liked my career to have ended differently. But there's a lot of pain in this world."

FOR THE FIRST 40 months that Mr. Cioffi ran his two hedge funds, neither of them had a losing month. Investors had to phone up his friends at Bear Stearns to get attention, Reuters reported. He had been one of the firm's pioneers of CDOs, securities created from sliced-up and repackaged assets, like subprime mortgages. In fact, his first fund, started in 2003, and the more leveraged fund that followed, which actually had "Leverage" in its name, were built from them.

In early 2007, when the subprime market began its spectacular fall, Mr. Cioffi told his clients they would be fine. "This is not a systematic breakdown," he said on an April investor call, when he insisted there was "no basis for thinking this is one big disaster." At the same time, he and his colleague admitted to each other in emails that their world may be "toast."

During last year's trial, where those emails were read, Mr. Cioffi wasn't rattled, he said. "I felt very comfortable with where I stood. I knew I had done nothing wrong. I knew I was innocent. And I had faith in the system."

By the time the trial began, his old firm had been shuttered for a year and a half. "Keeping in mind that I had a lot going on at the time, I really wasn't thinking so much about [it]," he said. "I obviously felt badly that Bear Stearns no longer existed, but I didn't feel like what happened at the hedge fund contributed to the demise, nor caused their demise."

The notion that the implosion of his highly leveraged funds badly damaged his firm's finances and reputation, he said, is mistaken. "I didn't have any feelings of guilt. I mean," he said, and then paused. "I didn't have any feelings of guilt. Over what?"

Instead, he is resigned to the fact that people need scapegoats in the wake of a disaster. "Look, I think it's just human nature. People want to have a bogeyman," he said. "People don't want to take responsibility for their own actions."

BEFORE THE TRIAL, he unloaded his house in Southampton, along with the New Jersey home. "We sold them from a position of weakness," he said. "People knew." He kept his house in Vermont, where he was raised, but couldn't close on a luxury apartment at the iconic Stanhope on Fifth Avenue, where he lost his deposit. "Believe me, that was kind of our dream, and unfortunately it ended badly."

His choice of automobile has changed, too. "All young men growing up want to see the day when they can afford a sports car of some sort. I was lucky enough to achieve that," he said. "Now it's just a phase of my life that's over." He says he enjoys driving his wife's Honda Pilot. "I would recommend it to everyone, downsizing and simplification. One thing you learn is that one can get by with a lot less than one thinks we need."

Every morning, he drives to the office with his 2-year-old poodle-spaniel, and his two sons, who are both around 25. "They like the market, they like trading, so it's a good opportunity. And it was a great situation for me as well." They get there by 8, and leave by 5, and then he works out, does research and watches the Yankees. "I've tried to create a routine," he said. "I think it's important to have a regular schedule. I don't consider myself retired; I consider myself self-employed."

His acquittal did not end the S.E.C.'s separate investigation. "So I've been unable to find work back on the Street," he said. His personal setup, which he calls Ralph Cioffi Asset Management, does equity investing and some trading. He enjoys it. "I'm lucky that I have this ability to still work, granted on a much smaller scale, managing what I have left."

But if he's opening up a new brokerage account, or out around town, sometimes he worries that his reputation has preceded him. "Maybe I'm imagining that," he said. "It's just one of those things you feel." People don't necessarily know his face, though pictures of him in handcuffs were in the papers. "Even though one's found innocent, you still have that stigma. It never goes away," he said. "I guess at some point in time all of that will fade."

In another New Jersey suburb, Howie Hubler, the Morgan Stanley mortgage trader who lost his bank billions of dollars, is also back at work, building up a firm called the Loan Value Group. The two men used to do a bit of business together. "I'm happy that he's moved on and has found something to do with his life," Mr. Cioffi said. "I don't think he was a villain."

He plans to leave the Northeast relatively soon. "I can honestly tell you I am very much at peace. I am very happy with my new life, I am very happy with my self-employment," he said. "I'd love to be able to get back to a more normal, traditional job. But, obviously, I don't think that's a possibility."

mabelson@observer.com

Correction: Howie Hubler worked for Morgan Stanley, not Merrill Lynch

1. Versailles to Hold Annual Contemporary Exhibitions
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami will be the next artist to showcase his wares at Versailles. The museum's director announced that the exhibition will become an annual tradition, featuring alternating French and foreign contemporary artists.

Our take: We're not sure what's more shocking: Manga in the Hall of Mirrors or French people poking a little fun at their own kitschiness. (Our pick for the next artist? Yayoi Kusama.)
[New York Times]

2. Controversial Beaver Sculpture Reinstated
A four-foot tall beaver sculpture was removed from public view in Bemidji, Minnesota in response to concern that the beaver's abdomen featured an image of the female anatomy. The decision incited heated debate over censorship in public art, and "Gaea" the Beaver was ultimately reinstated by the city council.

Our take: The combination of a beaver and vaginal imagery is so inventive, if makes us wonder if Georgia O'Keefe was just thinking inside the box.
[The Bemidji Pioneer]

3. VAG Moves to Avoid Marijuana Fumes
The Vancouver Art Gallery (affectionately abbreviated "VAG") cited the stench of marijuana smoke in the art gallery's vault as a reason behind its proposed move. Cue Edward Winkelman's competition for the best punny headline.

Our take: The phrase "high art" takes on a whole new meaning.
[The Globe and Mail]

4. Russia Convicts Curators for Controversial Exhibition
Two curators who organized the exhibition "Forbidden Art" in Russia were found guilty and fined $6,5000 for "inciting hatred," but escaped jail sentences. The 2007 exhibition featured controversial religious images such as a print of Jesus with the head of Mickey Mouse.

Our take: In targeting curators, the suit discourages art professionals from organizing future exhibitions in the country-a serious blow to the fledgling Russian contemporary art scene.
[AFP]

5. Owner of Chelsea Gallery Sued for Swindling Artists
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas and designer Paula Scher are suing Harry Stendhal, owner of Chelsea's Stendhal Gallery, for refusing them a fair cut of sales in order to fund his own extravagant lifestyle. Mekas alleges that Stendhal gave several of his works to restaurateur Guiseppe Cipriani to pay off a $90,000 tab.

Our take: Not paying your employees is the new black.
[NYP]

6. Russian Billionaire Fights Faberge for Name
Russian Billionaire Alexander Ivanov is looking to expand his collection of Faberge eggs and his museum, located in Baden Baden, Germany. But the expansion isn't coming easy: Ivanov's Faberge Museum is locked in a legal battle with Faberge, Inc. over the use of its name.

Our take: You'd think Faberge would be a little friendlier to a guy who paid $17.7 million for a single Faberge egg in 2007. What ever happened to "the customer is always right"?
[Bloomberg]

7. Avedon Foundation to Sell at Christie's
The Richard Avedon Foundation will action off a selection of the famed photographer's prints at Christie's in November. The sale, estimated to bring in $6 million, will feature 65 lots including the largest extant print of the famous "Domiva with Elephants."

Our take: Looks like Sotheby's isn't the only one nabbing high-profile photography shows.
[Art Market Views]

8. Britain's Gentry Deaccessions
Many royal Brits, including Princess Diana's brother, have been flooding summer auctions with heirlooms and artworks in an effort to stave off the economic crisis. Notable lots include an over $30 million Turner painting and an over $10 million Peter Paul Rubens work.

Our take: This is what happens when a harsh economic climate collides with a record-setting auction season. No one ever said the art market wasn't complicated.
[The Guardian]

9. Art Comes to the iPad
Caravaggio paves the way for artist-related iPad apps. The multimedia company Scala Group International has launched a $1.99 "CaravaggioMania" app, which features over 300,000 high-resolution images of artworks and an interactive video tour of Rome's Galleria Borghese.

Our take: Caravaggio may be in vogue since the discovery of his remains, but we'll wait for iPad fanatic David Hockney's inevitable app.
[Artinfo]

10. Louise Blouin Doesn't Pay Anyone
 A bevy of former employees are suing Louise Blouin, the Brit behind Art + Auction and artinfo.com, and her company Louis Blouin Media. Plaintiffs include writers, a Manhattan design firm, and a placement agency that found a butler for Blouin's Southampton home. All claim Blouin has not paid them for their work.

Our take: Which reflects more poorly on the economy: that Blouin didn't have enough money to pay her employees or that people still lined up to work for her despite her reputation?
[NYP]

The Pink Elephant at the Capri Hotel, in Southampton, was holding a book party on its patio to mark the release of Stephen Valentine’s Timeship: the Architecture of Immortality (Images Publishing).  According to the announcement, the building, which presently exists only in models and drawings, aspires to “provide storage for cryo-preserved biological materials, near-extinct species, and humans traveling to the future for later reanimation.” The mission of this optimistic undertaking is to “conquer aging and eventually death.”

In 2004, The New Yorker published a story by Alec Wilkinson about Mr. Valentine’s ongoing search for a building site somewhere down South. The architect was seeking a place that had the wild beauty of Tuscany yet which existed at a safe remove from natural disasters, nuclear accidents, terrorists, and foreign aggression. It seemed hopeless, but then, in 2007, Mr. Valentine quietly acquired a property–described as “the size of Central Park”--whose location he is keeping secret until this fall.

To acquaint guests at the Pink Elephant with the Timeship, and with the world of cryonics, the architect, 54, projected onto three 6' x 6' screens a sequence of images, including a water droplet (representing “the beginning of life”), an eight-cell stage embryo, and a still from Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Whenever the screens were jostled by the wind, the sketch of a hairless naked woman who had been pickled in liquid nitrogen appeared to breathe.

“Sometimes people get the wrong idea about this project,” Mr Valentine said. He was wearing a charcoal-gray suit. In the Eighties, he worked for I.M. Pei, most notably as a senior design architect on the Holocaust Museum, in Washington, DC. “They see you as some kind of ten-headed monster. They’re misinformed.” The incontrovertible truth of this statement became apparent as The Transom began chatting with party guests, few of whom, excepting the Park Avenue dermatologist Neil Sadick, displayed much interest in living forever.

“Is this part of Obama’s health plan?” Larry “Ratso” Sloman, author of On the Road with Dylan and The Secret Life of Houdini, wondered.

“Do they cryopreserve the people dead or alive?” inquired a barefoot, pretty hotel patron named Dee Lakhani, lounging on a white divan under a canopy and smoking a Marlboro (“I will be the first to go!”).

The architect said he gets the latter question quite a lot (possibly because he refers to Timeship’s future clients as “patients”). “You have to be dead. It’s not like you say, I’m tired of living, freeze me. The press often misses that point entirely.”

“So what do you think of the concept?” the Transom asked Thomas Twiggs, a young Wall Streeter in a Madras-print jacket, as an image of a fresh corpse being hooked up to a heart-lung machine flashed on a screen. Spearing a lobster corn cake from a cocktail tray, he said, echoing the response of almost everyone on the patio, “What concept?”

Again and again, the Transom tried to explain, but after about twenty seconds, people’s eyelids would start to droop.

There are currently around 100 people in a state of suspended animation at various small outfits around the country. If the Timeship becomes a reality, the $300 million building could house up to 10,000 such souls who will have undergone the procedure in the hope of awakening in the future.

Because that moment could be hundreds of years distant, the structure, which is comprised of nine concentric circles, must be as impregnable as the medieval castles and World War II bunkers that informed the design process. Nine rings of stone will serve as armor in the event that the Timeship is ever fire-bombed. To beef up security, Mr. Valentine may surround the building with what is described in the book as ‘a moat-like water feature.’ Or, as the architect said in a telephone call after the party, he might lay out a golf course just beyond its fortified walls, in the expectation that friendly golfers would alert staff to any peculiar goings-on.

As it stands now, surviving family members will not be permitted to visit the potentially departed on account of security concerns. “I mean, we can’t have people roaming the grounds,” he said with regret. “Let’s say your loved one is stored there. Do you want some shady individual just showing up?”

The next phase of the project involves raising money to build the $300 million facility. Over the next two years Mr. Valentine plans to develop temporary pods for people wishing to inhabit the Timeship but who might die before it is built.  Until then, he intends to promote the project in Hollywood.

According to real estate broker Faith Hope Consolo's retail newsletter, a branch of Michael Kors has opened at 55 Main Street in East Hampton this season. A couple of doors down, Hermes has moved in at 63 Main; a few more doors down, at 69 Main, Tommy Hilfiger has opened his first East Hampton store; and a few more doors down, at 75 Main, the Magaschoni Boutique has moved in. On Newton Lane, the town has welcomed Madewell, J. Crew's casual brand, a La Perla boutique, Steven Alan, and a new outpost of Coach. 

Meanwhile, Cynthia Rowley and Tomas Maier have moved into spaces at Wainscott; a Diane von Furstenberg store has opened up in Southampton; and a Screaming Mimi's vintage boutique is in Montauk.

It seems that winter's vacant storefronts allowed the newcomer luxury brands to negotiate last-minute low rents. But not all of these are permanent leases; some, it turns out, are short-term, seasonal leases that last until the fall and then—well, no one quite knows. The pop-up stores could become permanent or vanish as quickly as they arrived.

"Some are pop-up, yes, but most are permanent," Ms. Consolo insisted in a phone interview with the Transom. "Hermes is a pop-up, but that just means they want to try the market. But I think in this climate, everybody wants to protect their downside." (The Magaschoni Boutique, she said, is also a seasonal store for now.)

Ms. Consolo also said that not all of the spaces were leased at last-minute bargain prices.

"All of the rents across the board are at a lower level in general, but some of these deals were made prior to the downturn," she said. "Many of these were contemplated even last fall and a couple of spaces were leased before the old stores even went out."

Ms. Consolo added: "Despite what everyone is thinking about no activity, we're signing leases. There's just so much activity and they're doing incredibly well. I got a call from Hermes, I got a call from Gucci. Everybody is thrilled."

ialeksander@observer.com

[via Hamptons.com]

- Deviled Eggs
- Chilled Cucumber Soup
- "BLT" Cherry Tomato Cups
- Mini Lobster Rolls
- Raw Bar

*Hot Appetizers*

- Asian Tuna Meatballs**
- Grit Cakes with Rock Shrimp, Chipotle Peppers, and Cilantro Cream**
- Scallop and Corn Chowder**
- Honey-Orange-Onion Marmalade and Goat Cheese Canapes**
- Clams Casino**

*Entrees*

- Fried Chicken
- Billy's Marinated Skirt Steaks
- Striped Bass

*Sides*

- Tomato Salad**
- Corn Salad with Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes**
- Local Greens Salad**
- Sugar Snap Pea and Radish Salad**

*Bread*

- Spicy Cornbread
- Buttermilk Biscuits

*Desserts*

- Banana Pudding**
- Peach Cobbler**
- Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cake**
- Strawberry Shortcakes**
- Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting**