PHOTO: Inside the New York Academy of Art's Annual Tribeca Ball

Eddie Roche, Alan Cumming and Cynthia Rowley. Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com

The New York Academy of Art’s annual benefit is the rare gala evening that eschews the formality of the ballroom and puts art front and center. Last week, cocktail-in-hand guests were ushered around the Academy’s studios, engaging directly with the latest batch of talented MFA candidates, who showed off the paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints they’ve developed over an intensive year. This is one of the most exciting evenings in New York’s cultural calendar—part celebration and part preview of the works you’ll be seeing on gallery walls and auction houses before long.

The guest list reflected the Academy’s special place in the New York art ecosystem: serious enough to attract heavyweight artists, but lively enough to attract a crowd beyond the patron class. Professionals of the art world Barbara Guggenheim, Rose Dergan AND Gabriel Florence mixed with philanthropists Nikol Salmasi, George Sard AND Susan Wassersteinwhile customers and collectors Bill Jacob AND Sharon Jacob, Stephanie French AND Suzanne Cochran kept company with a host of artists: Will Cotton, Vincent Desiderio, Neil Jenny, Alyssa Monks, Karla Shen and Pioneer Works Dustin Yellin between them. Fashion designers Nicole Miller AND Cynthia Rowley, photographer Sophie Elgorttelevision producer and writer Bob Cochranmedia personality Keith Keenan and actor William Abaddy drew a crowd that read, fittingly, as part of the city’s creative and philanthropic life.

Model Bazhan Iuliia reads the art at the show. Matteo Prandoni/BFA.com

At the conclusion of the cocktail hour, cocktail-style, color-coordinated walkers led the crowd to a seated dinner at tables framed by murals of hand-painted flowers. actor Chris Hanke led a lively auction round, and the chamber raised over $900,000 in support of the Academy’s student scholarships and public programming—a major win for the independent graduate school, which relies on just that kind of generosity to provide access to talented artists from diverse backgrounds. (We’d bet most in attendance felt the pull of the paddle.)

Beyond the studio sessions, the evening’s most significant moments center around this year’s honorees. The well-known actor and longtime supporter of the Academy Alan Cumming took the night’s tribute along with the philanthropists Eileen Guggenheim AND Russell Wilkinsona co-founder of the Academy and a longtime trustee. their daughter, Isabel Wilkinson Schorshared stories that spoke to the practical nature of her parents’ decades of dedication to the institution in a tribute that reminded the room why these evenings exist in the first place.