Met Ball attendees, from left: Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch, Anna Wintour, Madonna and Katy Perry

Loews Hotels chairman Jonathan Tisch and his wife, Lizzie, are donating $10 million for a new gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a major renovation of its 23,000-square-foot Costume Institute, the New York Times reported. While fundraising for the project has been in the works for years (last year’s Gala Benefit organized by Vogue editor Ann Wintour raised around $9 million), the Tisch gift “provided us with the tipping point to move forward,” said Met director Thomas Campbell. Comments

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Egyptian officials are threatening to rescind Cleopatra’s Needle, an ancient granite monument that sits in Central Park, according to the New York Post. Zahi Hawass, secretary general for the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt, has written a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, accusing city officials of not doing enough to preserve the 3,500-year-old obelisk. “It has recently been brought to my attention that this incredibly valuable monument has been severely weathered over the past century and that no efforts have been made to conserve it,” Hawass said of the needle, which sits behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But Jonathan Kuhn, director of art and antiquities at the Department of Parks & Recreation, said that proper care and attention has been given to the monument. [more]

Billionaire David Koch will donate “at least $10 million” to fund a renovation of the entrance plaza to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he told the Wall Street Journal. Several as-yet-undisclosed architectural firms have already interviewed for the project, which will involve a makeover of the museum’s two landmarked fountains and its exterior lighting system, Koch said. The idea for the renovation was inspired by Lincoln Center’s new fountain, the effect of which Koch said he hopes to recreate.
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A rendering of the new theater (Source: H3 Hardy Collaboration)

For those of you who worry about the potential desecration of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center, in the form of Hugh Hardy’s newly announced black box venue that is scheduled to take up residence on the landmark’s roof, I can offer this consolation: the work that has already been done on the Beaumont’s plaza and surroundings, according to designs by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has wrought such a change upon the place that the new addition should make little difference.

We will not know until next fall, apparently, the success of that work, which includes, among other alterations, the creation of a huge grassy mound for sunbathing and a new restaurant along the sides of the reflecting pool that continues to hold Henry Moore’s titanic “Reclining Figure.”

What we can say is that the feel of the place will be — indeed already is — vastly different from what it was. The spare, almost minimalist, geometry of the post and lintel theater, the perfectly square reflecting pool, and the surrounding grounds, together with the way they all responded to the striated side of the Metropolitan Opera, provide one of the most muscularly modernist experiences in New York City. [more]