Washington Life Magazine
Washington Life Magazine

Around Town

With Donna Shor

CHINESE BLING
The Kennedy Center’s Festival of China opened with a bang, literally. Noise from the very special fireworks was so loud that frightened residents were calling emergency services from every part of the area. This monthlong celebration of Chinese culture featured more than 600 performers in Chinese dance, music, theater and traditional opera, and spurred a number of China-related events around town. One was a very charming evening co-hosted by Aniko Gaal Schott and Bill Haseltine at his handsome Georgetown home. Kai- Yin Lo’s jewelry collection, “The New China Chic,” was shown, and guests also toasted her fellow designers Barney Cheng, Vivienne Tam and Tim Yip as the champagne flowed. Kai-Yin’s collections are known for her placing of rare and precious materials—unusual jades, ivories, sapphires and pearls—in contemporary settings.

PROSPERITY ON YOUR COMPUTER?
Also in Georgetown, over on Wisconsin Avenue, Fernando Batista’s K.N.E.W. Gallery showcased three notable Chinese artists. Poet-painter Huang Yung Yu uses satire in his paintings, sometimes anti-government-directed. Artist Xu Huayi was denied permission to study art during the (very anticultural) Cultural Revolution, but since then has been able to study under Huang Yung Yu, among others. The dragonflies in Xu’s painting are exquisite, and Fernando told us they are never attempted by novices, as they require over 20,000 brush strokes for each wing (and a lot of patience!). Ninety-one year old Xu Lin Lu, a Chinese impressionist, likes to paint fish, and his viewers like that, too, because fish are the symbol of wealth, and viewing them could attract good fortune. It didn’t add anything to my wallet as I looked, but you could try the gallery’s web site, “knew.com,” and see if the finny ones can work their magic for you over the internet.

FROM KENYA TO KALORAMA
When Jeffrey and Juleanna Glover Weiss introduced their guest of honor, Father Angelo D’Agostino, at their Wyoming Avenue reception, Glover Weiss told of the Catholic priest’s work in Kenya, the hardships at the NYUMBANI Hospice/Orphanage there, and its need for support. Among the appreciative crowd were Laura Genero, the deputy secretary of labor; Washington Times writer Ralph Hallow and his wife Millie; Antoine Sanfuentes, NBC’s senior White House producer; Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles; Kristen Silberberg from the state department; and Time-Warner’s Matt Cooper. While Fr. D’Agostino was here from Nairobi, a benefit was held for the orphanage at the Renaissance Washington Hotel, with entertainment by Washington’s favorite musical mischief-maker, political satirist Mark Russell.

FALL REUNIONS
The 250-strong crowd thronging the Chevy Chase Club at Lynda Webster’s annual fall coffee gathering included many of Washington’s most-visible and stylish women. Tall and always elegant Nini Ferguson and petite, always-beautifully- dressed Tandy Dickerson were a case in point. (“Wyatt helps with decisions on my wardrobe,” Tandy says of her husband. “He has a discerning eye that I trust.”)

“WATER DIVIDES NATIONS AND WINE UNITES THEM”
This is wine and hospitality consultant Daniel Mahdavian’s (of D.M. and Company) happy motto, and it was wine which united him to his betrothed, wine authority Melanie Corcoran, granddaughter of the legendary lobbyist and FDR-confidante Tommy “the Cork” Corcoran. They celebrated their engagement at an “It’s nacho ordinary” Latin-themed party hosted by Elsie and Dr. Jim Sprague, and Melanie’s mother, Carole Anderson, with south-ofthe- border food, margaritas and wines (top quality, of course) for 80 local and international friends, including Anthony and Chase Harrigan of IBG Partners LLC; Les and Mary Lou Zimmerman of First Capital Realty (who are big wine collectors), Jan Donovan; Salim and Himela Mohammed of Vancouver; Melanie’s father, Dr. David Corcoran, and his wife, Margaret; and Steve Maguire, the night life lounge guru, about to open his new place at Dupont Circle, the Science Club.

THE NEWEST OLDEST NEWSPAPER
Unlike all the just-born publications recently popping up like—well, popcorn—on the local scene, is the historical Alexandria Times. John Arundel of the communications family, has just revived—200 years later—the newspaper that George Washington sat down with at five o’clock in the morning to read under his favorite fig tree. The Times’ re-launch was celebrated at a party at Crystal City’s McCormick and Schmidt’s restaurant, where we learned that co-owner William McCormick had just been appointed U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and was about to leave for that country.

AGED BUT NOT AGING
One publication that is fresh and certainly even more relevant today than when it began is the recently revamped the Congressional Quarterly, which just celebrated its sixtieth birthday. Newsmakers and news gatherers flocked to Decatur House for CQ’s event, and some even made it around the corner to Olives for the instantaneous after-party. Host and CQ president and publisher Robert Merry has been attracting attention and controversy with his recent, incisive book. The title explains the hoop-la-la, “Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy and the Hazards of Global Ambition…” A week prior, power players, columnists and staffers joined the Washingtonian’s Philip and Ellie Merrill and editor Jack Limpert to celebrate the magazine “Washington Lives By.” Guests included Fred Malek, John McLaughlin, former Sen. Paul Laxalt and former GOP chairman Frank Fahrenkopf.

POMP AND PAGEANTRY
Carmen Petrowitz and William Feighan represented the United States recently at a colorful ceremony in Austria. The “white-tie-and-decorations” Investiture of the Order of St. Stanislas took place in the 12th century Plankenstein Castle, just outside Vienna, during an eventful weekend. The chivalric order was founded in 1765 by Poland’s last king in honor of the martyred saint, and continues today the charitable works for which it was begun. Afterward Carmen returned to the U.S. only to take off again for Buenos Aires. Send advance notice of an event you think Around Town should know about to aroundtown@washingtonlife.com.

Pilar O’Leary
Smithsonian Secretary lawrence small, the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute hosted a reception at the National Museum of American History on September 12 to celebrate a decade of Latino cultural contributions to American society. Pilar O’Leary was recently named the director of the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives.

 

Jeffrey and Juleanna Glover Weiss honored Father Angelo D’Agostino

Artist Mary Page Evans


In conjunction with the Kennedy Center’s festival of china, Aniko Gaal Schott and William Haseltine hosted a reception to showcase jewelry designer Kai-Yin Lo’s collection, “The New China Chic” on October 4. Kai-Yin’s collections are known for her placement and use of rare and precious materials— unusual jades, ivories, sapphires and pearls—in contemporary settings.
PHOTOS BY KYLE SAMPERTON

 



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