Then came lacmaвЂ™s director, Michael Govan, in a Gucci tuxedo, to shout out even more good news: вЂњThis has been our best year ever! Attendance is up to 1.3 million! To borrow a phrase from Ed Ruscha, вЂLos Angeles County Museum is on fire!вЂ™ вЂќД«ut thatвЂ™s not what people really wanted to talk about that night. of Yahoo, led off the speeches, boasting about the museumвЂ™s agreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to have Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali convert the former May Company department store at the west end of lacmaвЂ™s campus into the largest film museum in the world. Lacma board co-chair Terry Semel, the former C.E.O. Most of CaliforniaвЂ™s greatest artists were there, too, from conceptualist pioneer John Baldessari to video maestro Bill Viola. Pomegranate-juice queen and longtime board member Lynda Resnick-who, along with her husband, Stewart, gave the museum $55 million in 2008 to build the Renzo Piano-designed exhibition pavilion named after them-air-kissed Elaine Wynn, the bejeweled ex-wife of casino king Steve Wynn and one of the boardвЂ™s newest members.

Hollywood royals were there in force, including Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, Diane Keaton, Ryan OвЂ™Neal, Tom Hanks, Cameron Diaz, Salma Hayek, Robert Pattinson, and Steven Spielberg, along with a clutch of industry insiders who sit on lacmaвЂ™s powerhouse board-CAA partner Bryan Lourd, producers Brian Grazer and Steve Tisch, and journalist Willow Bay, accompanied by her husband, Disney chairman Robert Iger. It honored the artist Ed Ruscha and the late film director Stanley Kubrick, whose epic career was the subject of an exhibition opening to the public the following week. The black-tie affair was co-chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio and Eva Chow, the wife of restaurateur Michael Chow and a member of the museumвЂ™s board, and underwritten by Gucci. вЂPlatinumвЂќ tables went for $100,000 and вЂњgoldвЂќ for $50,000 at the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtвЂ™s sold-out Art + Film Gala in late October, and even at those prices, tables were packed so tightly into the mammoth tent set up in the museumвЂ™s central plaza that waiters had a hard time serving guests their Filet of Beef Wellington-not to mention the Laurent-Perrier champagne.

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