At SFMOMA ball, statements are made

“We need to get back to the priority of attention,” said Denise Bradley, when asked what statement her white sequined dress was making. The occasion was the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Ball, and it had been suggested that attendees wear clothes making statements. She looked beautiful, but the statement, made upon demand, was a bit impenetrable. In keeping with that, “I hate the confusion” was on the back of Jane Mudge’s T-shirt. “I love the confusion” was on the front. Some statements were difficult to read. As Andrew Belschner’s shirt said, “Don’t Blame Me.”

Willie Brown was in a pale-pink vest, a lavender sport coat and hot-pink shoes, an outfit in keeping with his high sartorial standards. He said he’d bought the footwear a year ago in Atlanta, hoping that his shoes would stop people in their tracks. Senior curator Gary Garrels ,ina blue suit, was less ambitious. “I’ve got a tie on,” he said. “It’s a special occasion.”

The party on Wednesday, April 25, which honored Charles Schwab for his 10 years as chairman of the museum’s board, had about 1,000 guests for two tiers of dinner and an additional 1,000 or so to dance and nosh afterward. But, of course, its purpose was fundraising, a mission fulfilled. In the auction alone, almost $3 million was raised, $200,000 each for two dinners for 26 at the museum, prepared by Dominique Crenn, and $2.5 million for Ellsworth Kelly’s painting “Red-Orange Relief,” bought by a telephone bidder.

The visual themes, by Stanlee Gatti, were botanical: the gala dinner on the first-floor site of the parking lot in a tent lined with hot pink daisies, inspired, said the program, by the work of Marimekko designer Maija Isola; the Supper Club an homage to tropical leaf prints of the 1940s and ’50s.

The beneficiary of all this, of course, is an art museum celebrating imagination and vision, expressed by Gatti’s attention to detail: The tent’s elegant flat gray ceiling established it visually as room rather than tent; the bandstand carpeting of the Supper Club on the second floor was in the same print as the banana-leafed upholstery of the sofas and chairs. The dinner music was jazz by the Marcus Shelby Trio, and the dinner itself was by McCall’s, served by an indefatigable army of waitstaff.

Party co-chairs were Nancy Bechtle and Charlotte Shultz. Asked about her statement, Bechtle, who was wearing a Valentino dress printed with images of planets in the cosmos, declared she was “out of this world.” But the answer was impromptu; what was really on her mind was more down home.

At the start of the evening, she was horrified to discover she’d torn a hole in the sleeve of her dress. But since Valentino was a sponsor, there were Valentino staffers at the party. Joachim Bechtle, Nancy’s husband, mentioned the mishap to one of them, a quick call was made, and a seamstress (“a lovely lady,” said Bechtle) was dispatched from the mother store for emergency rescue. Hiding in the ladies room, Madame Co-Chair stripped down to her underwear, and the dress was repaired.

At the end of the evening, after many raised arm gestures — handshakes, hugs, waves, expressions of joy — the dress was intact, the emergency repairs having held up. Maybe that’s what Bradley meant by “priority of attention.”

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⏩ Problems of Marinites: Eugene Schoenfeld forwards the plea from his NextDoor listings for a neighborhood in San Rafael. “If you like leaving old bread, muffins, rolls, waffles, etc., out for the birds, please place a container with water in it nearby. The crows are bringing all your leftovers to my bird baths for soaking. It is quite a mess to clean up daily.” But it seems to me the providers of food should not be asked to provide beverages, too. Lady, send the request to the avian version of NextDoor.

⏩ Andrew Sean Greer, whose novel “Less” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction a few weeks ago, revealed in an interview in Esquire magazine that in the dramatic tale of his learning about the award, The Chronicle had a supporting role. He has been working at an artist residency in Italy, “and a friend of mine was there. He showed me his phone, which was a picture of The San Francisco Chronicle saying that I had won the Pulitzer Prize.”