Art Center Honors Alyce Williamson

Hugs and kisses were abundant when 900 crowded into Art Center College of Design in Pasadena Friday to celebrate the gala opening of the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery.

At the epicenter was philanthropist and community supporter Alyce Williamson.

The night before, in heavy rain, art critics and press people plodded over plastic, into clouds of sawdust and through masses of carpenters trying to meet a deadline for the party and the inaugural West Coast exhibition of British artist Christopher Le Brun’s huge romantic canvases.

Said center president David Brown: “The happiest moment of my life was when I said goodby to the last carpenter tonight.”

Artist David Hockney arrived at the affair with John Cox, production director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Community leaders were out in force: center gallery director Stephen Nowlin; Alice Frost Thomas of the Pasadena Beautiful Foundation; opera supporters Warner and Carol Henry; foundation director Chuck Thornton with Geneva DeWitt; contemporary art collectors Gordon Hampton and Adelaide Hixon; civic leaders Joni and Clark Smith, Bill and Jane Taverner, Edith and John Roberts and Edward and Gloria Renwick, and Museum of Contemporary Art Director Richard Koshalek.

At the helm, too, was Alyce’s husband, Warren (Spud) Williamson, chairman of the Art Center board of trustees and a Times Mirror director.

Among the Art Center 100 members and their escorts were Spud Williamson’s aunt, Martha Chandler, escorted by Bill Croxten, and the Williamsons’ longtime friends and traveling companions, Kelsey and Brad Hall (he’s also an Art Center trustee) and Sis and Lou Jones.

The Williamsons’ four offspring also celebrated--daughters Sandra Fallat, Dr. Ruth Williamson and Lisa Williamson, and son Henry.

HISTORICAL FIRST: 1992 took precedence over 1492 on Thursday evening at the Huntington Library in San Marino when the Infanta Dona Cristina de Borbon, the 26-year-old daughter of King Don Juan Carlos I and Queen Dona Sofia of Spain, bowed her head at an elegant black-tie dinner for 300 and let James Hena, chairman of the Old Pueblo Council of Albuquerque, N.M., gently clasp a squash blossom necklace around her neck.

“I hope in the near future you can come and visit us in our homelands,” he said.

Hena, an American Indian, addressed the controversy over celebrations surrounding the 500th anniversary of the coming of Christopher Columbus to the Americas.

“Seeing this exchange tonight, I think you can see our perspective of what happened in 1492. But . . . we were not around 500 years ago, and history is history. There’s a saying in America--that’s water under the bridge--and I hope from this year forward that Spain and we can work together . . . and make this Earth a better place to live.”

The night was the opening of the Huntington’s “Spain in the Americas, 1492-1600: What is the Legacy?” exhibition.

It has been financed by a $300,000 grant from the Fundacion Ramon Areces and Harris’ department stores of San Bernardino; the award is the first given by a private Spanish foundation to a U. S. cultural institution.

Robert Erburu, chairman of the Huntington’s board of trustees and CEO of Times Mirror, introduced visiting dignitaries.

Spain’s Ambassador to the United States, Jaime de Ojeda; Fundacion president Florencio Lasaga, and California First Lady Gayle Wilson were among those joining Erburu and his wife, Lois, at the head table.

Prominent in the crowd, too, were Spain’s Consul General, Eduardo Garrigues, and his wife, Pilar; Harris president Jorge Pont; Los Angeles County Supervisors Deane Dana, Mike Antonovich and Gloria Molina; Huntington president Robert Allen Skotheim and his wife, Nadine; University of Arizona President Manuel Pachero; Ben Atencio, vice chairman of the Old Pueblo Indian Council; Los Angeles County’s chief of protocol, Sandra Ausman, and her husband, Sheldon, and Rafael Mazarrasa, president of Spain ’92 Foundation. The foundation is coordinating efforts in the United States for the Columbus Quincentenary, the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona and the World’s Fair in Seville.

The wife of Madrid’s mayor--Eulalia Miro--also attended, as did the consul generals of Mexico, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Portugal, Iceland, Australia, Liberia, Peru, Guatemala, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Argentina, Honduras and the Netherlands.

William Moffett, director of the Huntington Library, said the star piece in the exhibit is the Columbus memorial of 1502, the oldest known text written by Columbus.

The letter, written to his son Diego shortly before he embarked on his fourth voyage in 1502, was thought to be lost, and was recently rediscovered bound into a 17th-Century genealogical history at the Huntington.

In other festivities, the Infanta was honored at a reception by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors; John B. Kilroy, chairman of the county’s Quincentenary Committee, and Thomas and Colleen Lee of Newhall Land and Farming Co. Mayor Tom Bradley also hosted a reception.

THE BACHELORS: Serpents (not alive) in the centers of the dinner tables and pyramids light-projected onto ballroom walls established the “A Night on the Nile” theme for the 87th anniversary Bachelors Ball at the Beverly Hilton Friday night.

Only ball chairman Charles F. Donnelly, among 800 attendees, was tipped off to look Egyptian; he wrapped himself in white and came as a mummy.

That’s the fun of it all. No one knows what to wear. But, the dress was terribly fancy.

Robert H. Carpenter, The Bachelors president 25 years ago, wore a royal-gold kimono that his wife Janice’s great-grandfather, the late Hamilton Cotton, had brought back from Shanghai in 1920. Janice Carpenter was all but unrecognizable with her hair dyed black for the night.

Tally and Bill Mingst were bustled and bowed for dangerous liaisons.

Willard and Margaret Carr came as Harry and “Harriet” Houdini.

Bob Forward, in a 15th-Century Venetian carnival costume, was able to drink his Champagne without removing his pointed mask.

Raoul and Mary Jo Balcaen were morticians.

Art Rasmussen was a classic movie director, tipping his beret.

Hugh Bateman, a sultan, and Annie Liebig, a harem girl, looked diabolical.

Tony Witteman and Teri Koller were a pirate and a wench.

Beefeater David Sargeant brought Wendi Casady, who tried to appear wicked in black stockings and ruffles.

It was, in a way, president Chip Stuart’s swan song. He’s also been a ball chairman twice.

Now, he’ll give up bachelorhood and The Bachelors for Jill Bowen on May 9.

KUDOS: Cardinal Roger Mahony presented his Cardinal’s Awards Friday night at a dinner at the Beverly Wilshire to four honorees: Dolores Hope, Gerald J. Lynch, Margaret Rendler and Wilfred L. Von der Ahe.

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS: To Ann Barrett, surprised on her 50th by friends, and to Norton Simon, on his 85th at a dinner at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.