The Brice of fame

V. F. Camera

It was an evening of visual splendor. A crowd of young students and old friends turned out for the opening of the Brice Marden show at the Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea. Architect Philip Johnson and artists Chuck Close and Kathryn McAuliffe, among others, admired the paintings and drawings, which sold out before the exhibition was hung. Afterward, Marden's wife, Helen, hosted a small dinner at their Greenwich Village town house for Francesco and Alba Clemente, Jane Wenner (who collects Marden), artists Donald Baechler and Nan Goldin, dealers Vincent Fremont and Earl McGrath, and model/actress/talk-show host Lauren Hutton. That same night uptown, the annual Antique Dealers show opened at the Seventh Regiment Armory, benefiting Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital. The show drew the royalty of interior design, including Mark Hampton, Mario Buatta, Peter Marino, Mica Ertegun, Chessy Rayner, and Betty Sherrill, not to mention such doyennes of decorating as Susan Gutfreund, Marie-Josee Kravis, and Claudia Cohen.

DEBORAH MITCHELL