Municipal Art Society Mingles in LVMH Building

The Municipal Art Society’s Urbanists group gathered at an unusual location this year, filling the Magic Room in the LVMH Building for its annual fund-raiser. A choice of unusual venues is nothing new—last year the group went to the usually off-limits Cloud Club in the Chrysler Building—and fits the organization’s mission of championing the city’s architecture and urban character. (And MAS’ connections certainly come in handy—the society’s big gala was held at the French conglomerate’s then-new building in 1999, initiating a friendship between the corporation and the nonprofit.)
Typically used for LVMH’s internal events, the Magic Room is a large, modern, high-ceilinged space surrounded by three walls of windows. Regan Lynn, the society’s membership director, planned the cocktail reception for 250 and worked with Kevin Calica of Kevin Calica Presentation to bring in some clean, simple decor to complement the Magic Room’s architecture. Calica put an L-shaped arrangement of long tables in front of two walls of windows and lined them with stools to allow for easy mingling while people enjoyed cocktails. Punctuating the tables were floral displays from Lauren Messalian of Florishop, who filled tall vases with towering forsythia branches, which gave the room a dramatic splash of yellow and echoed the room’s vertical architecture.

The party featured tasty bites from Entertaining Ideas Catering, including citrus-cured gravlax on corn blinis, macadamia chicken with lemongrass sauce, and sautéed wild mushrooms on risotto cakes.

—Mark Mavrigian

Read our coverage of MAS’s gala...