A Met Gala bursts with Cycladic Flavor — and Greek tycoons — in old cold New York
The Museum of Cycladic Art organized the Cycladic Gala, Glamor in Antiquity at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Our favorite boutique museum in Athens, The Museum of Cycladic Art, organized the Cycladic Gala, Glamor in Antiquity at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 18 — and the Greek (and a few American) A-listers were out on the town in force.
The stated aim was to support the purposes and activities of the Museum of Cycladic Art, in view of 2026, when it will celebrate its 40th anniversary. 370 guests were there.
Last June the museum hosted Greek Column along with international spa expert and wellness guru Pam Price for a special media visit that came just months after the Chaeronea exhibit, which your chief columnist reported on exclusively for New York’s leading cultural newspaper, The New York Sun. Said Ms. Price, “I love this museum.”
Meanwhile, in New York…the ne plus ultra of the Greek-American scene converged at the Met to add a little Cycladic glam to Manhattan’s November chill. In attendance were the likes of Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotakis, a Greek business executive who has promoted Greek cultural heritage through her finance and fashion entrepreneurial ventures, and who is married to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the current Prime Minister of Greece. Sources say Ms. Grabowski-Mitsotakis has a home on the Greek island of Tinos, which is not necessarily our favorite island but that’s another story.
Other bold-faced names included art world scions Almine Rech Ruiz-Picasso, Dakis Joannou (he’s from Cyprus! Jeff Koons did up his yacht!), Stavros Niarchos, and Pfizer honcho and event chairperson Albert Bourla, of whom we are frankly not a fan (his company’s covid “vaccines” sent us to the emergency room! it’s all documented! oh, and when you’ve got John Legend-mid shilling for shots on American TV, you can bet the product in question is, uh, questionable!) plus the ghosts of all those plucky ancient Egyptians who built the Temple of Dendur that somehow ended up inside the Met on Fifth Avenue — insert eyeroll/cultural misstep emoji here! — and provided the backdrop to some serious fall season Gotham kibbitizing, avec le Greek touch.
Said one of our flies on the hallowed Met walls, “It was a delightful evening of sheer enchantment and everything was über-lovely, perfectly arranged — people were saying it brought back some of the glamour of Donald Trump’s 1980s New York!”
We hear that one of the highlights of the evening was a pair of performances by the Martha Graham Dance Company, including the solo “Ekstasis” and the duet, “The Saraband from dark meadow.”
Reports that some beverages from our favorite Greek brewery, Corfu Beer, were seen could not be independently confirmed. But Anna Wintour was not present, and following the Vogue dragon lady’s inappropriate endorsement of national embarrassment Kamala Harris for presidente, her absence made our source smile!
Bottom line? When in Athens, make sure to make time for The Museum of Cycladic Art
Excellent, if not eccentric at times coverage of an historic moment in Greece's arcane art history.