A Day in the Life: Bettina Korek

A Day in the Life

Gary Tinterow

Christian Deydier

Ken Yeh

Piotr Uklanski

Damien Hirst Robert Longo Chris Burden Lawrence Weiner Liz Larner Lari Pittman Kelley Walker The Appendix: Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Pipilotti Rist, and Paul H-O

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12:40 P.M. Drives past Comme Ça looking for valet parking but can’t find any.

12:42 P.M. Searches for a parking spot on Melrose. Nothing.

12:45 P.M. Tries a lot behind the restaurant—again, nothing. Keeps her cool throughout.

12:47 P.M. Drives around the block still seeking a spot for her SUV. Success: a space on La Cienega.

12:50 P.M. Orders a soy latte and an egg-white scramble for brunch. Talk turns to BCAM. While Sherak wonders if PETA knows about Damien Hirst’s use (or abuse) of butterflies, Korek calls the BCAM opening a great marketing event for southern California arts. “People in the entertainment business who don’t hear about most exhibitions heard about the gala,” she says, adding a few minutes later, “We live in Hollywood. Culture has a lot to compete with here. Culture needs a little army on the ground.”

2:45 P.M. Drives to LAX Art, the nonprofit exhibition and lecture space in Culver City, to check on a colorful collaborative installation in progress by Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, New York artists who do appropriation-style work together but who also have their own individual practices.

3:03 P.M. With LAX's founder, Lauri Firstenberg, discusses plans for publicity, which Korek is handling under her FYA World umbrella. Next step: a media alert about the billboard the artists have made featuring scanned images of bananas, which is going up on La Cienega. “For them to do a billboard here is exciting, because that’s what we need most— to bring art into the public landscape.”

3:44 P.M. Drives home, revealing her “secret route” (hint: it involves a detour onto National) from Culver City to Westwood. “I can’t imagine coming to L.A. from another city and finding everything,” she says. “That’s one reason for making our maps.”

4:10 P.M. Drives to Santa Monica for the birthday party of Lucas, the one-year-old son of the Los Angeles Times reporter Chris Lee and the freelance art critic Emma Gray. She brings lemon chiffon bread.

5:30 P.M. Drives home. “I’ve always been go go go,” she says. “My father’s like that, too.”

6:50 P.M. Now in a black Galliano cocktail dress with a feathery black Sonia Rykiel wrap, drives to LACMA to prepare for the Avant-Garde bash. Meets in the main building with the LACMA photography curator Charlotte Cotton, who has helped to “curate” the night’s events, to see the cabaret-inspired art band My Barbarian rehearse its finale, “One Night Only.”

8:00 P.M. In the entrance pavilion to BCAM, plays host by warmly meeting and greeting guests, most of whom she knows. There are second-generation boldface names such as writer-designer-filmmaker Liz Goldwyn; The Office actress Rashida Jones; actor Will Kopelman; and designer Alexandra von Furstenberg. Korek says she is “very happy with the turnout.”

9:45 P.M. To document the night, the party’s host committee meets for a group picture outside BCAM at Chris Burden’s new installation, Urban Light.  The piece consists of dozens of salvaged cast-iron Art Deco lampposts arranged in an architectural formation. When they all light up, who needs a red carpet?

11:45 P.M. Walks through Urban Light on the way to her car.

12:05 A.M.  Arrives at the Villa Nightclub to make a brief appearance at what she calls “the unofficial afterparty.” Goes home after 15 minutes, tired at last.

"A Day in the Life" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.