Throw Better Parties: Art’s Birthday at the Marciano Foundation

One thousand think pieces have been written about the horrors of our inability to come together as humans. We are all stuck behind our screens, or at home chilling with Netflix and pets, and we aren’t engaging with people! While I do engage with people, I don’t engage with the kind of people who write low-grade moral panic screeds to get clicks and comments about the death of imagination and our addiction to phones, written by rage bait, taking commenters typing fervently on their phones. This means I don’t know what their solutions are (touch grass?), but given the scolding tone of the headlines and first 3 sentences, I will safely guess that the answer is never “throw better parties”.

Last weekend, the Marciano threw a better party, and boy, did we in-person community the shit out of that. A birthday party for Art! Simultaneously something new people to art can understand and the snobbiest of snobs will relish in the historical continuation of a Fluxus concept held by the French artist Robert Fillou. Angeleno art loyalists can come for the Corita Kent and stay for the John Giorno activation. The cute scenesters can selfie in Crowns by David Horvitz, and everyone can look great in the fun dress code*. The entire crowd engaged in a Yoko Ono Scream Symphony, then gleefully transitioned to either the dance floor or the well-stocked bar! It was an incredible party for the arty set, and I’m going to be thinking about it, setting the tone for the year instead of being an outlier. It’s not lost on me that in 2026, we are responding to the Happening models of the 1970s, but that’s another story altogether. 

*More parties should have dress codes because, at our core, we all like to participate, and it gives an instant connection to strangers.