Sotheby's Host 'Take Home a Nude'
The illustrious auctioneers take on the New York Academy of Art's 'nude' benefit.
Each year the New York Academy of Art hold their annual 'Take Home a Nude' art auction and party, and this year the event was hosted by Sotheby's New York. The auction featured around 170 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs of the nude, which were donated by artists young and old including Jeff Koons, Nan Goldin and Sante D'Orazio. One such piece was Nan Goldin's photograph, Valerie Floating in the Sea, of a naked woman (or, more specifically, of her bust) surfacing in a body of water.
The party was attended by the likes of Mary-Kate Olsen, Arden Wohl and Padma Lakshmi, who all got to gawk at the semi-clad artworks and the appropriately semi-clad 'performers' who patrolled the party. Many of these performers donned little else but nude-coloured body stockings and the occasional pair of towering stilts.
According to sources, Mary-Kate was heard murmuring, "It looks like one of them might fall," referring to the wobbling stilt-walkers. Who would've though an Olsen twin would be uncomfortable with vertigo?
A fellowship table at the high-profile benefit allegedly fetches around $50,000 - and that's before you've even bought anything. But if you've got it, why not flaunt it - in the name of art, of course.
Rosie Dalton
