Celebrate LongHouse Reserve Founder Jack Lenor Larsen’s 90th Birthday At “BOOM! The Cosmic Benefit”

The most talked about event of the year has arrived: BOOM! The Cosmic Benefit! Celebrate Jack Lenor Larsen, founder of LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, and his 90th birthday at the annual LongHouse fundraiser on Saturday, July 22 from 6 to 11 p.m. This year’s benefit will highlight honoree Cai Guo-Quiang, honoree and Guggenhiem curator Alexandra Munroe, and electric sitar performer Mohsen Namjoo aka “the Persian Bob Dylan.” Don’t miss performances by guitarist Gian Carlo Feleppa, bathing beauties the Brooklyn Peaches, and the Jamaican band Royal KhaoZ.

“The food and drink is inspired by France, Japan, Cuba and beyond. From Jamaica, India, Brazil and Persia comes a great repertoire of music and the whole place decorated in white by Jack Larsen himself,” said Dianne B., LongHouse Reserve Board President. “The highlight of the night is a custom made 7 p.m. daylight art explosion by world-reknowned Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang”

Guo-Qiang is a New York-based artist and is one of the most celebrated contemporary artists originating from China. He is known for a remarkable new kind of fireworks spectacles which he calls “explosion events.” By taking gunpowder, which is one of China’s Four Great Inventions, Guo-Qiang led the way in a new impressive form of art that is substantial and metaphorical. His fireworks represent nature, culture, life, and death.

Munroe has led the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Initiative since its founding in 2006 while also working on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum Project and the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. She convenes the museum’s biannual Asian Art Council, a curatorial think tank, and heads The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative. As senior advisor, global arts, Munroe helps to guide the foundation’s intellectual and institutional agendas for expanding its purview to study, acquire, and exhibit art from beyond the Western World. You can visit Munroe’s exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at New York Guggenheim Fall 2018.

Martha Stewart at the 2016 summer benefit at LongHouse Reserve. (Photo: Dawn Watson)

Namjoo combines transcendent classical Persian rhythms with blues, folk music, and rock and roll. He composes, sings, teaches, acts, and plays several instruments, including the electric guitar and the traditional Persian lute, the sitar. He composed the score for last month’s controversial production of Hamlet at the Sheen Center and starred in the film Radio Dreams, which won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam.

LongHouse Reserve is a 16-acre reserve and sculpture garden located in East Hampton that features pieces from Buckminster Fuller, Yoko Ono, and William de Kooning, just to name a few. The Reserve exemplifies living with art in all forms. Larsen acquired the property in 1975 and he has laid out an entrance drive lined with majestic cryptomerias, established lawns and ornamental borders, and defined major spaces as settings for plant collections and sculptures.

Tickets begin at $1,250. Contemporaries tickets are available for $650 for LongHouse Contemporaries Members (21-35).

LongHouse Reserve is located at 133 Hands Creek Road in East Hampton. For more information and to purchase tickets, call 631-329-3568 or visit www.longhouse.org.