Britney Spears's Las Vegas Announcement

To announce the two-year residency of Britney Spears at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, organizers staged a dramatic card trick in the Nevada desert—with 1,300 volunteers. On September 17, the masses of fans and volunteers were taken to the desert on a bus. They lined up in height order (with the taller folks in back), each holding an individual card. When held up together, the cards formed a Britney Spears billboard.
Photo: Denise Truscello
1. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Gala

#1 Art & Design Event
The buzzy benefit draws attention for its experiential events tied to exhibits and artists. The 2011 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ gala under the artistic direction of Marina Abramović drew 750 patrons who donned white lab coats and ate their dinner as apparently disembodied heads, positioned as table centerpieces, stared at them. Next: November 17, 2012
The buzzy benefit draws attention for its experiential events tied to exhibits and artists. The 2011 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ gala under the artistic direction of Marina Abramović drew 750 patrons who donned white lab coats and ate their dinner as apparently disembodied heads, positioned as table centerpieces, stared at them. Next: November 17, 2012
Photo: Nadine Froger Photography

Stationed along a path lined with tiki torches, the waitstaff wore all-white uniforms with red rope belts and offered guests cherry-garnished Bacardi cocktails.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

Patrons encountered two challenges as they passed through the center’s rocky entryway: a tricky terrain for heeled footwear and the sight of a human punching bag in artist Carl Lawrence's installation "Remembrance."
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

Following the cocktail reception, 700 guests descended into a large white tent erected on the center's lower terrace. More than 50 tables—each starting at $15,000—filled the space, which was dominated by a central installation of canvases emulating the vibrant work of Clementine Hunter.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

Robert Wilson's "Stargazer Beds" offered a counterbalance to more nefarious pieces by scattering pulley-operated planks around the main terrace for guests to be lowered backward, their eyes toward heaven.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

Known as the devil's preferred hue, red featured heavily throughout the space—from watermelon and beet hors d'oeuvres (pictured) to performance costumes to a band of fabric running up the center's front façade for the Hope Esser installation "Telegraph Process."
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

Fashion photographer Bill Cunningham of The New York Times snapped shots of patrons as they ventured from one installation to the next on Watermill’s 8.5-acre campus, a procession that concluded with a performer balancing between two wooden chairs over a shallow pool in Evangelia Rantou's "Solo With Chairs from Medea(2)."
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

In "My Favorite Food," artist Yao Zhang served a continuous course of bubbles emanating from a headless human form presided over by two performers dressed as white-jacketed waiters with giant red lips.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

Bringing a bit of digital into the natural world, artist Jörg Brinkmann posed a performer atop a large white box that flashed tweets from the likes of Justin Bieber and the Dalai Lama each time he lowered a crooked green stick in "The Tweeting Stick."
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

For "Amnesia" by Dilek Acay, six performers—three male, three female—stood like columns on either side of a wooded path, draped in white fabric from the neck down and hurling staccato, gibberish-y words at each other as guests walked in between.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

Throughout the night, guests were able to bid on items listed in the silent auction, including G.T. Pellizzi's "Conduits in Red Yellow and Blue (Figure 26)," which combined lightbulbs, porcelain lamp holders, galvanized steel, and wire.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash

To highlight the work of African American folk artist Clementine Hunter, participants in the Watermill Center Summer Program recreated African House, a structure on Melrose Plantation in Louisiana, where Hunter worked and painted. The center’s reimagined house, positioned at the epicenter of the event, served as a gallery for Hunter’s colorful, deeply personal canvases.
Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/BizBash