The Artful Diners: Patrons Take Their Place at the Table

All over the city last weekend, smallish groups of art patrons gathered in largish homes for a series of dinners with high-profile artists to benefit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. For a very special (and very affluent) few, there was not just a fabulous dinner to look forward to (this one at the Holmby area home of LACMA’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees Wally Weisman and his wife, Sheila) but the opportunity to be photographed by world-famous lenswoman Annie Leibovitz.

While the tab for most of the dinners was $400 per person, the Leibovitz event cost $25,000 per couple

LACMA’s biannual fund-raiser “Art of the Palate” featured nearly 60 swanky dinners--from Malibu to Pasadena--with guests of honor ranging from Picasso biographer Arianna Huffington holding forth on the artist at the Holmby Hills home of Colleen and Bradley Bell, to Ed Moses and Dennis Hopper at the Brentwood home of museum trustee Stanley Grinstein and his wife, architect Elyse Grinstein.

The dinners raised more than $500,000.