After four years of construction, the Art Institute of Chicago's new galleries of African and Indian art of the Americas opened earlier this month. Currently on display in the galleries is a textile woven in Madagascar, made out of threads collected from more than one million golden orb spiders.
On June 1, museum president and director James Cuno and the textile's creators, Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley, co-hosted a dinner to celebrate the exhibit and the opening of the galleries. Museum development associate Kim Masius tapped Susan Shin, president of New York's Shin Advisors, to produce and design the event. The dinner's 70 guests included museum trustees, curators, and donors, and the golden, spidery textile set the tone for the evening's food and beverage and decor.
During a cocktail reception that let guests check out the new exhibit, Bon Appetit Catering offered a specialty "Gossamer Dream" champagne cocktail. Items on the dinner menu were meant to fall apart at the touch of a fork—evoking the delicate nature of spiderwebs and silk—and most took on a golden sheen. Dishes included crispy golden corn fritters, pan-seared scallops, and extra-tender glazed short rib and sliced tenderloin.
Heffernan Morgan Ronsley handled decor. In the Trustees Room of the Modern Wing, where the dinner took place, designers hung webbed scrims from the ceiling and pointed amber lights at them to make the scrims cast golden, spiderweblike patterns throughout the room. Light boxes covered in gold filigree decorated tabletops, and Gloriosa lilies and ferns and fronds painted in burnished gold were meant to have a spidery look.
