How might we compare June 7's Beaux Arts Ball inside the Jeannette Edris Rockefeller and Townsend Wolfe galleries to its forebears of the late 1950s and '60s? Oh, it's impossible!
Actually, it isn't.
Jeane Hamilton, the longest serving member of the Fine Arts Club, which puts on the soiree, has been at all of them.
"The Beaux Arts Ball started off being something special," she said. "I think this one was a wonderful, appropriate experience ... a huge success."
Hmm ...
"They're all unique and different. There's just no way you can compare them."
Fellow club member and past Tabriz chairman Druann Baskin said she "couldn't give tickets away." Maybe because black-tie in June is a hard sell? She also said those who dismissed it missed out because the space had great energy and she "had a ball, truly."
It's been 40-plus years since the last such ball, which predated the biennial Tabriz, the longest-running nonprofit fundraiser in central Arkansas. This ball, revived for the occasion of the Fine Arts Club's centennial, featured elegant tables and furniture, part dining room, part lounge. Most of the space was for dancing, a dais for the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra's big band ensemble and Broadway singer Sal Viviano. There was no sit-down meal, just hors d'oeuvres and drink, music and dancing.
One thing is certain, "everybody seemed to be having a good time on their level, whether they wanted to dance or not," said Hamilton, who went out with the band and not a moment earlier. "I didn't see anybody that looked bored -- there just wasn't room for that."
High Profile on 06/15/2014