The Pioneer Works Village Fete, an exuberant herald for New York’s spring benefit season, began with a toast to patriotism—preceded by a re-contextualization of the term.
“It was not good to be called a patriot when America was started because it meant that you did not want to be ruled by an autocrat” said Austin Hearst, filmmaker and grandson of the totemic media baron, and whose wife, Gabriela Hearst, was the benefit’s lead sponsor. He continued that, when faced with tyranny, the patriot, “believed in the American system, and so that is what I believe we have in the room tonight, a room full of patriots.”
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He asked those gathered at Pioneer Works (PW), a former ironworks built in 1866, the same year inalienable rights were promised, by law, to any person born within these borders, to “raise your glass and to toast to the nobility of humans and to patriotism.” The crowd—some 500 artists, scientists, writers, and philanthropists—drank.
In the speeches to follow, including the morbid but magnetic bit from the institution’s founder, Dustin Yellin, whose 50th birthday that night also marked, the word “Trump” was not uttered. Though I wondered if, before his speech, Hearst had seen the news of the two new (and factually dubious) public holidays dedicated to America’s role in the World Wars. Beneath the music—even the short set from a white-suited David Byrne—a phantom snip, as PW and its non-profit peers prepare for perhaps the direst season of fundraising in recent memory.
In a testament to the times, or to the sense that most of these people actually know each other, Gabriel Florenz, who recently ascended to PW’s executive director, while retaining his role as artistic director, admitted that PW had been “super stressed” about its budget. With its mission of intellectual curiosity, and dedication to diversity, the institution surely has no champions on Capitol Hill—not that they’ll need any, probably.
Since Yellin bought the red-brick industrial building in 2012, they’ve built a team of 43 people and a current $9.1 million operating budget; progress in the $30 million capital campaign made them eligible to receive some $5.7 million in city and state funding.
PW boasts about some 400 alumnae of its visual arts, music, and technology residencies and has given early career-defining shows to artists such as Jacolby Satterwhite and Derrick Adams, the latter of whom donated a piece for the night’s auction; also on the block: a party in Yellin’s adjacent studio space, a Nate Lewis sculpted inkjet print, and a Prada handbag filled with PW merch. Claire Danes, Darren Aronofsky, Fred Wilson, Maggie Rogers, and Moses Sumney were among the fete’s attendees. To say, it pays when fans and friends aren’t worth distinguishing: the night netted $1.4 million for the organization.
The Pioneer Works Village Fete on May 6 in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Deonté Lee/BFA.com
The fete also suggested how arts and culture in New York may survive the next three years. Tiffany Davis, a PW board member, said during dinner that the institution she leads, Red Hook Art Project, has increasingly turned to local philanthropy amid the dismantling of federal arts and culture funding. The party favors, too, were provided by Gotham, a New York-based legal weed enterprise with a budding visual arts and fashion entity. Fete-goers went home with roughly $100 worth of gummies and pre-rolls, as well as a vape pen. It’s potential with precedent: in the lack or collapse of federal arts infrastructure, perhaps the next Rockefeller will be an collective effort of our neighbors, or the neighborhood smoke shop.
Either, I imagine, would well suit Yellin, who marked his 50th birthday—or maybe his 500th, or five thousandth. Space and time, both within his dioramic sculptures, which are set for a new show at Almine Rech this June, and his general outfit, holds slim regard for third-dimension silos. Standing by the stage next to a flower-topped cake with a mic in hand, he thanked his mother, Jackie, for his birth. And then he said, “We are going to die really really soon.” Adding that we live shoulder to shoulder, “toe to toe” in this “weird fucked up reality that we cannot touch, define, or explain.” All that is to be done, at least on May 6 on Pioneer Works’ ad-hoc dance floor, is to “love one another—or die.”