Recap: Throwing a Bash? Surround It With Culture, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 12:00PM 
According to the New York Times one of the more curious chapters in the history of museums is the evolution of the Temple of Dendur, built in Nubia in 15 B.C. and installed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1978, into one of Manhattan’s premier party spaces.
“Gamely, the guests tried all the conventional New York conversation openers — real estate prices, friends who have been mugged recently, well-known people whose children have been arrested on drug charges recently, Brits, live-in help, the dishonesty of helipad contractors,” wrote Tom Wolfe in an essay, “The Worship of Art” in 1983, satirizing what had become a recognizable scene for New York society: dinner at Dendur. The Egyptian Le Cirque.
As with so much else in the late-20th-century museum world, the idea of cultural institutions as halls for parties raised eyebrows, was ridiculed and, ultimately, envied.
Feature 
