MOCA Mixer: Celebrating the Salle Opening

“Well, something really wonderful happened this week,” Bill Kieschnick declared at dinner Thursday night. “We hung a show and the artist liked it.” Kieschnick, chairman of the board at the Museum of Contemporary Art, looked across the table in Spago’s back room at a beaming David Salle. From looking around the room, it was clear that everybody liked what was going on at MOCA.

Crowded into the Sunset Strip spot were MOCA regulars like Fred and Joan Nicholas (just back from Paris, etc.), Kieschnick’s wife Keith (just back from the Golden Door), Jane and Marc Nathanson (just ready to head to Europe), Lennie and Bernard Greenberg, Eli and Edythe Broad, Caroline Cushing Graham, Ava Ostern and Chuck Fries, Bea and Phil Gersh, Ames Cushing, Councilman Joel Wachs and Pippa Scott.

MOCA backers Doug Cramer and Craig Johnson had put together the gathering, celebrating the opening the next night of Salle’s show--huge collage-like paintings--at the museum. MOCA’s Richard Koshalek was hugged and kissed by all, as is the way with a successful museum director--and there wasn’t a pizza or a Wolfgang Puck in sight.

GREETING FROM STATE OF MIND--Malibu’s Brian Fox, whose advertising agency usually creates movie ads (E.T.’s boy on bike crossing moon), has expanded into post cards. Created by his wife, Kara Fox, the psychological post cards feature greetings from places like “The State of Anxiety”--that particular card showing the towns of Heebie Jeebies and Manic-Depressive Junction right down the road from Uppa Creek and Wits End. Hey, we know the place well. . . . And, in another California innovation, Marilyn Kattleman has created Inside Moves, a company that will do all relocating chores for the too-busy person. They handle the movers, the utilities, etc. and use a videotape of the “old environment” to set up the new house. (But will they then stay around and run one’s life that efficiently?)

UPCOMING--The UCLA Art Council on May 3 presents “A Sunday in the Park” in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, featuring a son-et-lumiere display after champagne and dinner. The evening’s honorary chair is Judy Murphy. The UCLA Art Council supports the UCLA Art Department by providing funds for exhibitions, scholarships and lectures. . . . People for the American Way presents “No Laughing Matter” on May 3 at the Improvisation featuring a corps of comedians, including Sandra Bernhard, Whoopi Goldberg and Bob Goldthwait.