Carriage Barn Arts Center Board of Directors President Serena Gillespie says there are two major reasons that inaugural fundraiser “A Night in Havana” sold out two weeks before the event.
L-R: Carriage Barn Arts Center Board of Directors President Serena Gillespie, with Co-Directors Eleanor Flatow and Arianne Kolb at “A Night in Havana,” the center’s inaugural fundraiser, held May 17, 2014. It sold out two weeks earlier. Credit: Michael Dinan
“One, the directors [Eleanor Flatow and Arianne Kolb] over the course of this year have had an amazing push in PR and marketing, and the community is responding,” Gillespie said from under a tent outside the Carriage Barn, home of the New Canaan Center for the Arts, as 160 supporters arrived to mingle, dance and laugh (see video above) on a picture-perfect evening for “A Night in Havana.” The fundraiser featured live Latin music from Manchado, plenty to drink, silent auction and a Cuba-inspired menu—all amid the “Absolut Kuba!” exhibition which runs through June 1.
“Our turnouts at openings have been astronomical, and now on top of that, we have an exhibition going on that is really caught the eye of a lot of people,” Gillespie continued. “We brought in a lot of people to the lecture last week and to the openings for people who had never set foot in the Carriage Barn before. So I think between the two there is newfound interest.”
Greenwich resident and Stamford attorney Steve Certilman and Sophia Forster at “A Night in Havana” on May 17, 2014. The inaugural fundraiser for the Carriage Barn Arts Center, the event is built around “Absolut Kuba!”—part of Certilman’s private art collection, on public display for the first time in an exhibition running through June 1 at the center.
It showed.
Attendees moved easily into and out of the music-filled gallery—Manchado includes musicians from all over Fairfield County, mostly Norwalk, Fairfield and Bridgeport—taking their air in the comfort of a transformed courtyard and picking from an hors d’oeuvres menu that included mini tuna cucumber ceviche, mini cheese quesadillas with caramelized onions and chorizo, Cuban beef empanadas, Caribbean cod fritters with Creole sauce and Cuban-style pulled pork sliders with “mojo” sauce. Dessert included mini chocolate mousse shot glasses and fruit brochette with mango coconut dipping sauce.
The premier sponsor of “A Night in Havana” is William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty (William Larkin and Realtor Fatou Niang were noted specifically during the event). Official sponsors also include Fitwell Group, Ferrari-Carano, Ron Barcelo, Moffly Media and NewCanaanite.com.
For Greenwich’s Steve Certilman, a portion of whose carefully curated collection—on public display for the first time—makes up “Absolut Kuba!” the event was the culmination of an exhibition that already was “like an out-of-body experience.”
“Because you see all these things that you live with, that your relationship with is at a close distance of a few feet,” Certilman told NewCanaanite.com. “They’re on both sides of the hallway or on the other side of the room. And then in a space like this, they take on a whole new dimension. And this is one step beyond that, because now add to it the festive atmosphere, the band which is playing such wonderful music, wonderful people here to celebrate the art, the Cuban-themed food that we have here tonight, it’s just fabulous.”