The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) held its annual gala at Pier 60, celebrating outstanding accomplishments in the arts and design fields. This year’s Visionaries! Awards honored design advocate, patron, and longtime MAD Trustee Charles S. Cohen; the late architect Zaha Hadid; Angela Missoni of the Italian design house Missoni; and conceptual artist Yinka Shonibare, MBE. The event, hosted by Simon Doonan, brought together 500 guests, including art patrons, artists, designers, and socials, and raised $1.7 million for the museum. It also introduced the museum’s new Nanette L. Laitman Director, Jorge Daniel Veneciano.
Among those in the stylish crowd were Jonathan Adler, Dror Benshetrit, Andi Potamkin Blackmore, Zoe Buckman, Felix Burrichter, Wendell Castle, Jerome A. Chazen, Anna Cleveland, Pat Cleveland, Charles S. Cohen, Clo Cohen, Simon Doonan, Sebastian Errazuriz, Leila Heller, Elizabeth Kabler, Nan L. Laitman, Shari Siadat Loeffler, Francesco Maccapani, Rosita Missoni, Angela Missoni, Luca Missoni, Monique Péan, Linda Plattus, Ralph Pucci, Bruno Ragazzi, Randi Schatz, Patrik Schumacher, Jean Shafiroff, Hadieh Shafie, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Shannon Stratton, Barbara Tober, Stefano Tonchi, and Jorge Daniel Veneciano.
The Museum of Arts and Design, marking its 60th anniversary this year, commissioned New York–based artist Tom Sachs to create this year’s awards. They went to: Charles S. Cohen, owner, president, and CEO of Cohen Brothers Realty Corporation, He redeveloped Manhattan’s D&D Building, Los Angeles’ Pacific Design Center, Design Center of the Americas, and Decorative Center Houston. Through his Cohen Media Group, he produces and distributes independent and foreign films. Cohen serves on the boards of trustees for the Museum of Arts and Design, the French Institute Alliance Française, Lighthouse Guild, and the Real Estate Board of New York.
The late architect, Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid (1950-2016), DBE, founder and partner of Zaha Hadid Architects. Hadid was a trailblazing, award-winning architect (she won architecture’s Oscar equivalent, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004), who broke barriers for women in her field. Moving from conceptual architecture in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she was heavily influenced by constructivism in her early career, before evolving into her later fluid, multi-perspectival style utilizing technological advances in parametric architecture. She completed numerous commissions that became neo-futurist icons, including Guangzhou Opera House, the London Olympic Aquatics Centre, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State University.
Angela Missoni is the creative director of the family-run fashion house Missoni, founded by her parents in 1953. The Missoni label pioneered a distinct design aesthetic defined by colorful pattern: zigzag motifs, stripes, waves, and slub yarns in a patchwork of geometric and floral jacquards, which appears as modern today as when the company was founded, Missoni now reaches beyond the runway to include home design and decorative accessories.
Yinka Shonibare, MBE, is celebrated for his painting, sculpture, photography, and film that explores race and class and questions the meaning of cultural and national definitions. A 2004 Turner Prize nominee, he has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and at museums worldwide. His works are included in the collections of prominent museums, including the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Haute Scene
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