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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Although she is only 29 years old, Korek has already made a name for herself as someone who knows everyone, and has a hand in everything, in the L.A. art world. She attends almost any event worth attending—and at 5 feet 11 inches, she is easy to spot. An L.A. native whose father is a successful land broker, she returned to her hometown after graduating  in 2000 from Princeton, where she studied economics before switching to art history. Korek soon landed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), first in the development and then the communications office. She left the museum two years ago, but while there she witnessed and helped foster the rise of L.A.’s art scene.

With an easygoing sort of determination, Korek has drummed up corporate support for nonprofit art spaces, getting Hermès, for instance, to back a benefit auction in Culver City for LAX Art. And she has cultivated young collectors through events like the bash she threw at the legendary print gallery Gemini G.E.L. for entry-level patrons of LACMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), the Los Angeles Opera and the Music Center, with sponsorship from the New Yorker magazine.

After years of applying her talents on an ad hoc basis, Korek recently founded her own development company, For Your Art, and a sister marketing and communications consultancy, FYA World, to coordinate all her activities—think a next-generation Yvonne Force Villareal meets Sara Fitzmaurice. She already has seven employees and a publishing project: an art-world map updated seasonally and distributed through hotels, restaurants and galleries.

Korek remains active with LACMA, where in 2003 she started a young donors group, called the President’s Circle Avant-Garde. On Saturday, March 8, Korek was busy with its first fund-raiser, “One Night Only,” at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), the new art institution on the LACMA campus bearing Eli Broad’s name and, at least temporarily, his collection. It raked in $75,000.

7:15 A.M. Wakes up in her Westwood apartment to what she describes as the “horrible beeping” of her alarm clock.

7:45 A.M. Does about 40 minutes of cardio on a cross-training machine in the gym in her building’s basement while reading the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times— “my BlackBerry is usually with me too,” she says.

8:45 A.M. Gets into her black Volvo SUV and drives to Frédéric Fekkai in Beverly Hills to get her hair cut and blown out by her stylist, Liz.

10:21 A.M. Now back at home, takes a phone call from Frazer Burkart, a vice president of the private-equity firm the Carlyle Group and also her cochair of the Avant-Garde group at LACMA. They discuss how to handle last-minute requests for event tickets now that they have hit capacity with 450 people. He tells her that people have been using the Smallworld Web site, the invitation-only version of Friendster, to find him and ask for tickets. “In one sense it’s good—next year people will get their tickets early,” says Korek, who is clearly in it for the long haul.

11:10 A.M. Dressed simply in jeans, a black sweater and leather flip-flops, she drives to the art gallery Regen Projects for a visit she has organized for a few Avant-Garde friends, mainly 20-somethings in jeans and sneakers.

11:30 A.M. At Regen, introduces Kevin Salatino, LACMA’s head of prints and drawings, who talks to the group about collecting drawings; Korek herself collects works on paper, her last purchase being “a small Robert Longo wave drawing,” from Margo Leavin Gallery, down the street. The young art patrons—standing before works by such artists as Lawrence Weiner, Lari Pittman and Liz Larner—include the hedge-fund manager Nico Mizrahi and the Hollywood producer William Sherak (Daddy Day Camp), who claims he was a member of Avant-Garde before he even knew what it was. “You can’t say no to Bettina—she wants a check, you write a check,” he says. “You have no idea what you’re writing it for.” Korek cops to her dogged persistence: “I just begged and begged in the beginning.”

12:30 P.M. Decamps with a handful of people, including Sherak and his wife, Ginger, for brunch at the brasserie Comme Ça, on Melrose.

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.