Derek Blasberg, Millicent Wilner, Kristina O’Neill, Gucci Westman, Natalie Massenet, Nick BrownBen Rosser/BFA.com
On the cusp of next year’s John Chamberlain’s centennial, honoring the late sculptor’s birth in 1927, guests from the worlds of art, design, and fashion—including Sophia Coppola and Thomas Mars, Athena Calderone, Gucci Westman, and Natalie Massenet—were invited for a rare treat: the chance to spend an evening inside his Estate’s private exhibition space on Shelter Island.
Ahead of an upcoming show and sale of Chamberlain’s works at Sotheby’s, which opens next month, Thursday evening saw a cocktail hour and dinner party hosted by Sotheby’s head of media, Kristina O’Neill, alongside Chamberlain’s widow, Prudence Fairweather, and his stepdaughter, Alexandra Fairweather, in partnership with Nordic Knots founders Liza Laserow and Fabian Berglund.
As the first event of its kind to be held in the space, the evening was marked by thoughtful details that nodded to Chamberlain’s artistic and personal legacy. The wooden chairs that lined the dining table originally furnished his now-shuttered 1990s-era Shelter Island Heights restaurant, Chamberlain’s. And even the food, which included heaping family-style platters of summer corn salad, grilled chicken and shrimp, and pie with peaches and cream, felt emblematic of his famously warm and relaxed hosting style.
It was a poignant night for the Fairweather family, who officially acquired the property so beloved by Chamberlain just three months after his passing in 2011. The exhibition hall itself has taken over a converted stable, where Alexandra once rode horses as a child. “The scale of this exhibition space allows these monumental sculptures to breathe, but it’s also incredibly intimate,” O’Neill said of the setting. “[The collection] feels alive in a way that’s very difficult to replicate in a museum or gallery.”
After guests perused the exhibit, dinner was served at a long, softly-lit table amidst Chamberlain’s prodigious sculptures of crumpled aluminum and plexiglass, hand-chosen and arranged for the occasion by Prudence and Alexandra. Underfoot was an amalgamation of Nordic Knots rugs in shades of pale pink, gold, and silver; selected to complement the monuments above them.
Chamberlain’s idea of a perfect party “was everyone laughing until late and then falling asleep right there on the couch in the barn,” Alexandra told Vogue, pointing to the immense piece of furniture. “And knowing him, somewhere around midnight, he’d have talked the whole table into a swim off the dock.”
Instead, guests were invited to sink into said carved foam couch, which he built while living in a SoHo loft when he couldn’t afford to buy any furniture. When people sit on said sofa, “the hope is that some of his nerve rubs off,” Alexandra explained, a sentiment which helped birth the interview video series, On the Couch.
As O’Neill noted, Chamberlain’s presence on Shelter Island is “almost mythical”—and while some of the evening’s locally-based guests had visited his nearby studio on the island, many agreed that they had long been curious about the property and contents of the stable.
As the saying goes: seldom seen is wonderful.
