Radio Kenneth

A great story about a promotional event in an art gallery (taken from here and here):

“Oh, it’s at the Art Museum. It’s martinis. That sounds like a really nice sophisticated event. We should be a part of it, and we had no idea,” said Erinn Lobdell of Glow Salon & Spa. The salon had a booth at the first-annual MartiniFest, a semi- formal event organized by Clear Channel Radio.

“You could see the crowd. It started out really nice. Everybody was having fun, and then, somewhere along the line it turned into the most drunk people I have ever seen in my life,” Lobdell said.

“Hindsight is 20-20 . . . it was probably too cheap,” Kerry Wolfe, a local programming director for Clear Channel, said of the event’s premise: unlimited martinis for $30.

“In our five years of experience, we have never had any problems with rental events,” David Gordon, the museum’s director, said in a brief written statement responding to questions about the event. “It was not an appropriate event to be held in the museum, and we have reviewed our procedures for bookings.”

As was the case with prior events, the sculptures lining one of the long gallerias in the museum’s Calatrava-designed building were in close proximity to serving areas during Martinifest. But this time, food, drink and vomit were on and around some of the artworks by night’s end, according to some accounts.

“It was crazy,” said attendee Kathleen Christians, 39. “People were shoving people over. People were getting sick, screaming, shouting, messing with the artwork.”

A group of four young men climbed onto “Standing Woman,” a tall, bronze sculpture of a goddess-like woman with exaggerated features by early 20th-century American artist Gaston Lachaise. “They were standing on it, grabbing the boobs, and somebody was just taking pictures with a cell phone,” said Laura Collins, 35.

Asked whether artworks had been damaged or are in need of cleaning, the museum said two sculptures had been removed for “review” and more would be known in two weeks, after the senior conservator returns to the museum and has had a look. The sculptures are made from resilient materials such as bronze.

“We were hoping for a little sophistication, maybe,” said Casey Rataczak, 27, a bartender. “People were shoving their martini glasses in my face. . . they were just worked up about getting their booze.”

At the event, several vendors ran out of food, drink mix and vodka early on. Some who ran out of mix started pouring straight shots of vodka, according to several accounts. 

“We were sardined in,” said Collins, a first-time museum visitor. “People, boy, they wanted their martinis.”

Denise Curran, 34, a lab technician who was injured when someone leaned onto a table that fell onto her legs, said, “You couldn’t go anywhere, there was no flow.”

“My whole calf is one big, nasty bruise,” she added.

“We had seen this girl who had fallen,” said Jamie Zwicky, 29, an emergency room nurse who attended the event. “She had a laceration on her head and some blood coming down . . . she looked very intoxicated.”

A man who got into what Wolfe called a “family feud” with another man jumped from an outside terrace on the south side of the museum, several reported. The hospital where the man was taken told Wolfe the man was going to be fine.

Zwicky said that when she left about 11 p.m., four ambulances were outside the museum; Wolfe insisted there were two.