For years, the Park Avenue Armory has been the site of large art exhibitions and fairs, galas and launch events, and even Fashion Week shows, but this December the Upper East Side landmark will be home to the first full season of artistic programming from the nonprofit that took over the venue from the state in 2006. As a prelude to this, the cultural organization (which is also called the Park Avenue Armory) held its first gala on Thursday night, and collected $1.2 million to support the revitalization of the 130-year-old building as a space for the arts. A four-day exhibition followed, an additional fund-raising endeavor that started Friday and ran through Monday.
The exhibition, which paid homage to the original 1879 fair held at the armory's Wade Thompson Drill Hall (held to raise funds for the interior design of the venue), was dubbed "Carnival" and included bringing in a 50-foot-tall Ferris wheel, vintage midway rides and games, and performers from the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus. "We're all about doing fantastic things in this space, so doing a carnival in here seemed like a really great idea and a way to invite New Yorkers to come and see the armory," explained Rebecca Robertson, president of the Park Avenue Armory. "I think a lot of New Yorkers don't know they have this space."
To design the exhibition and the opening night gala for 532 guests, the Park Avenue Armory tapped event design company Hickey Shields, which had the task of not only creating a cohesive look for the 55,000-square-foot hall, but also arranging the components to allow for a 532-guest dinner at the preview event the night before.
"Just working on that scale in general is challenging, and we grew to call it the 'drill hall effect.' The [Wade Thompson Drill Hall] has a very, very strange, almost illogical effect on scale, where certain things look fine and other things look very, very small," said Josh Hickey, co-owner of Hickey Shields. "It was also important to take into account the height of the space—the ceiling is 70 feet high. The reason we came up with the aerial landscape of lights was to fill the middle zone and make the space look full, all the while leaving free floor space for crowd control. We couldn't put too much on the floor because we anticipated so many visitors."
The gala gave guests a chance to partake in the rides and games before the dinner, while stiltwalkers, contortionists, magicians, and other circus acts from the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus roamed the floor.
