Art in Defense of the Environment

Mortons restaurant in West Hollywood was the site Tuesday evening for the first of two pre-events celebrating the fifth International Contemporary Art Fair (better known as ART/LA90).

The year-old Los Angeles office of the National Resources Defense Council, a national environmental organization, was the beneficiary of the $150-a-person dinner, which was served up to 270 people under a tent in Mortons’ parking lot. The $75 ticket price for thousands of first-nighters as ART/LA90 opened Wednesday at the Convention Center is also to go to the NRDC’s Los Angeles branch.

This is the first year a small patrons dinner was held before the opening. “You need to do things on a smaller scale before you do things on a larger scale,� said Nancy Vreeland, who chaired the event with Lenore Greenberg and Jane Nathanson.

Honorary chairpersons Tarlton and Peter Morton and Jayni and Chevy Chase were there, along with a crowd that included Marcia Weisman, art collector Dagny Corcoran, Joanna Kerns, Museum of Contemporary Art director Richard Koshalek, Robert Halff, Victoria Principal, Frank Gehry, Barbara Bain and Eli and Edythe Broad. NRDC head John Adams saluted Olivia Newton-John for her continued work for the environment, and Gehry offered a few words for Martin Friedman, the other honoree, and the director emeritus of the Walker Art Center, who retired last month.

There was lots to talk about, including last week’s long-awaited opening of the Armand Hammer Museum in Westwood and Marcia Weisman’s gift of the seminal Jasper Johns painting “Map� to the Museum of Contemporary Art. The one subject on almost no one’s lips was this year’s mega-crash of the New York art market, which has brought contemporary art prices down to earth with a resounding thud. Bringing up the crash in the art world, it seemed, was tantamount to bringing up the recession at a White House dinner.