Inside LACMA’s Star-Studded Art + Film Gala

“We’ve been waiting for you!” Laura Dern exclaimed as Ava DuVernay arrived under the “Urban Light” street lamps at LACMA’s Art + Film Gala in Los Angeles on Saturday night. The two, both in head-to-toe Gucci, embraced in a warm hug. “Now the party gets started.”
There were plenty of Gucci looks at the annual event presented by the Italian fashion house. Now in its ninth year, “the Met Ball of the West” as it’s been called, brings together high-profile creatives from the worlds of art and entertainment to recognize an artist and a filmmaker. This year, it was L.A. native Betye Saar and “Roma” director Alfonso Cuarón.
“The mystic eye,” said Saar, in custom Gucci, of the bejeweled diamond jewelry piece by Neil Lane on her black turban. “It’s a symbol that I use a lot in my work,” said the assemblage artist, a political voice since 1972, when she entered a small box containing an “Aunt Jemima” mammy figure wielding a gun, into an open call for black artists at a community center in Berkeley not far from the Black Panther headquarters. The piece was titled “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” and it inspired many, including superstar John Legend, who

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