At this year's Whitney Museum of American Art Gala, guests walked into an artist's studio, complete with nude models posing for sketches, canvas tablecloths anyone could drawn on, and works from the Whitney's collection projected onto screens throughout the space. This year's event took place at New York's Skylight at Moynihan Station, which was fitting: The raw space was a blank canvas in itself.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic hosted its 10th Anniversary Concert September 30. The event had a “Starry Night” theme. To create a celestial look, Shiraz Events draped the top of the dinner tent with an LED star-drop curtain, which resembled a twinkling galaxy. A custom chandelier added softly glowing light, and the walls were draped with silvery fabrics.
Held at the JW Marriott Marquis Miami on October 12, the event had a Brazilian Carnival theme. The ballroom was inspired by the celebration in Rio and had dancers in cages and lush, feathered headdresses. Samba batucada drums played in background.
Produced by Shiraz Events, the gala had a Halloween-inspired vibe due to its October 30 date—and its venue. Held at the macabre, gothic-looking Angel Orensanz Foundation, the event featured highboy tables that were spattered in fake blood.
On September 21, the Chicago benefit featured decor from Event Creative. The dinner tent held wooden farm tables topped with bouquets of lavender-hued flowers and produce including dahlias, roses, eggplants, and plums. Overhead, vine-encrusted canopies held hanging lanterns.
On November 9, a tented space in New York's Duarte Square opened as the headquarters for “Talking Transition,” a nonpartisan forum for citizens to express their views to Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s incoming administration. In order to grab the attention of those walking by, black milk crates were stacked outside to spell out the word "talk." Above the entrance, a giant red arrow pointed inside, where more black milk crates hanging from the ceiling spelled out the word "here."
A photography theme was prevalent at the event, which benefited the Photography Gala Fund. INDO handled the decor, which included centerpieces made of glowing, vintage slides. To add to the shutterbug-friendly atmosphere, a curtain of slides hung from the second floor balcony. And, naturally, the event had no shortage of photo booths for guests.
At the City View Loft party, guests got to pick and choose hangover cures to take home as practical favors.
For ExtraExtra
"This was an immersive theater experience that took guests from a library to a kitchen to a hidden cabaret, allowing them to experience the history, experience the use, and be entertained by the historic brand. Decor was designed as a traveling theatrical set (inclusive of 70 linear feet of faux bookcases!), allowing us to transform any old mansion we found into La Maison Cointreau."
For BMF Media
"Toyota’s family-friendly brand had its sports car inserted into a new Gran Turismo video game, so to celebrate we created a quirky arcade at the Standard Biergarten inclusive of stuffed teddy-bear garlands and video games ascribed to each Toyota model."
For a highly visual—and Instagram-friendly—photo opp, social media prompts served as props against a grassy wall decorated with Veuve bottles at the fourth annual Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic at Will Rogers State Historic Park in Los Angeles on October 5. Working with Veuve director of communications Christine Kaculis, BrownHot Events produced the event once again with the chic, subtly branded details that characterize the annual sporting event.
Wine tastings typically stick to a format that involves stations, swirling, and sipping, but a recent event in Toronto broke free of any staid formulas. Underscoring its company name, Open Wine hosted an event at 2nd Floor in April that had a “Be Open” theme, and guests were encouraged to open themselves up to more than just new types of vino. Plenty of the host company's product was on hand, but tasting the wine was just a jumping-off point for a night that included ping-pong tournaments, liquid-nitrogen doughnuts, temporary tattoos, and lots of tweeting. Guests placed R.F.I.D.-enabled wine glasses down on the so-called “Bird Box,” which was created for the event and pre-programmed with action tweets, which encouraged guests to participate in various activations at the event. The tweets from @Open_Wines included: "Hey @[user], Damn, you look great. Find our photog @textstyles + pose for a photo so we can remember this FOREVER. #BeOPENparty."
As the 80,000 attendees at last year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival celebrated on a Tennessee farm, news of their daily activities was posting to Facebook, creating nearly 1.5 million social impressions. But the attendees weren’t pulling out their smartphones to connect to Facebook; instead they were swiping wristbands with R.F.I.D. technology at one of 20 check-in portals around the 700-acre venue.
Goldenvoice hosted the first weekend of its Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, California, April 10 to 12. Among the weekend's big-scale parties was the Bootsy Bellows estate, where the logo and slogan of sponsor McDonald's backed a ball pit.
Flowers and vines covered a kissing booth photo station emblazoned with the message "All my friends are models."
In Northern California, Napa Valley Bike Tours offers customized, abbreviated versions of its Classic Napa Valley and Classic Sonoma Valley wine tours for corporate groups. Lasting four to five hours, the tours let guests pedal bikes at a leisurely pace and include stops at two local wineries for tastings and a picnic lunch. The company can host groups of as many as 200 guests, and larger groups are split up for tours of from 10 to 12 riders each.
The Green Living Show brought sustainable lifestyle ideas to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from March 27 to 29. The Sweat Equity Yoga and Fitness stage offered free yoga classes. The stage also hosted workshops and lectures covering health and nutrition.
On March 14, the Art Institute of Chicago hosted a gala to celebrate the opening of its new exhibition: "Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design 1690-1840." For the dinner portion, Bon Appetit Catering served a menu of Irish-inspired fare including rosemary-dusted lamb chops and Irish Cream cheesecake. To immerse guests in a thematic setting, Frost cast floor-to-ceiling projections of the Long Room in the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin on the walls of the museum. HMR Designs handled decor.
The space technology firm SpaceX embraced its mission at an outer-space-theme reception for clients and partners at Washington’s Carnegie Library on March 16. A hexagon-shaped bar was studded with LED lights and served dry-ice specialty cocktails. Evoke DC planned and designed the event. Atmosphere Lighting designed the lighting for the space.
Coca-Cola debuted “drinkable advertising” during the N.C.A.A. Men's Final Four in Indianapolis April 4 to 6 as part of Coke Zero’s “You Don’t Know Zero 'Til You’ve Tried It” campaign. At the March Madness Music Festival in White River State Park, the company erected a “drinkable billboard.” On the front of the 26- by 36-foot billboard, 4,500 feet of tubing spelled out “Taste It.” An elaborate pumping system carried Coke Zero through the tubing and down to a sampling station on the ground.
Turn 3-D projections into interactive games for guests with help from Montreal-based Luz Studio. For the city’s annual art show Luminothérapie, the visual design firm produced four interactive games inspired by early 20th-century carnival classics, such as shooting galleries and Whack-a-Mole. The games were part of the studio’s Fascinoscope installation, a series of eight large-scale projections on structures around the Quartier des Spectacles from December to February.
More than 320,000 people packed the streets of downtown Jacksonville, Florida, April 7 to 12 for One Spark, which bills itself as the world’s largest crowdfunding festival. Sculpture students from the University of North Florida created a huge shark sculpture that appeared to rise out of a fountain in Hemming Park.
Samsung celebrated its latest smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge, with launch parties in Los Angeles and New York on April 2 and April 7, respectively. V.I.P. guests at the Los Angeles event sat at a mirrored, U-shaped table and ordered courses through S6 phones.
