Nicholas Wilder Tribute Raises Funds for Center

Trumps chef Michael Roberts gave up his Sunday night bridge game and closed the restaurant to prepare lacquered honey duck, spinach and polenta for friends of the late, legendary art dealer Nicholas Wilder. Asher-Faure Gallery’s Patricia Faure organized the evening as a Wilder tribute and fund-raiser for a newly established Nicholas Wilder Center at AIDS Project Los Angeles, to begin construction this summer.

Wilder ran his widely known and respected gallery in Los Angeles from 1965 to 1980. He died last May of complications of AIDS.

The crush of Wilder’s artist friends, including David Hockney and Robert Graham, and former customers made the evening “feel like an opening at Nick’s,” said Faure.

“Everybody knew and loved Nick,” remarked Gemini G.E.L.’s Sidney Felsen, glancing around the room filled with fellow gallery owners Stanley Grinstein, Mallory Freeman, Jim Corcoran, Jean Milart, Margo Leavin, Betty Asher, Rosamund Felsen and Mary Boone; artists Laddie Dill, Ann Thornycroft and Alexis Smith; and collectors such as Doug Cramer, Laura Lee and Bob Woods, and Linda and Bob Gersh.

After a three-gallery viewing blitz (Gemini G.E.L., Asher-Faure, Stuart Regen) to see works by artists affiliated with Wilder in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the crowd settled into Trumps, where Hockney rose and led a toast to Wilder’s “untidiness.” Craig Cook, who lived with Wilder after he left Los Angeles and moved to New York, said privately that Wilder was “very uncomfortable with the attention focused on him, but I think he’d be pleased that the work of the artists was being shown.”