On a balmy evening earlier this month, gallery owner Nina Johnson hosted a few dozen guests at Shorecrest, a residential area about ten miles west of South Beach – where Art Basel Miami Beach and Design Miami were then in full swing – for a dinner infused with the enthusiasm and the creativity of the artist it honored, Rochelle Feinstein.
The setting was Johnson’s eclectic, art-filled 1920s Craftsman home, which she shares with her musician husband, Daniel Milewski, their two young sons, and Gordy, a Newfoundlander who spent most of the evening at the feet of various guests sat. Johnson co-hosted the event with the heads of two other eponymous galleries, Bridget Donahue, based in New York, and Hannah Hoffman, based in Los Angeles. As of the beginning of this year, those three women, along with three more female gallerists – Candice Madey, of New York’s Candice Madey Gallery; Francesca Pia, of Galerie Francesca Pia in Zurich; and Emanuela Campoli of the Campoli Presti gallery in Paris — have teamed up to represent Feinstein. “It’s like a sisterhood, but without a fight,” Feinstein said next to Johnson’s pool early one evening.
The dinner celebrated a year in which Feinstein, 75, exhibited in all six galleries and began reaching a wider audience with her diverse body of work, including abstract paintings, prints and video, often with text and collage. “Rochelle has been working so hard for so long, especially with peer attention, and it felt like we wanted to do something to really celebrate her,” Johnson said. “I just said, ‘Let’s do it at my house.'”
In keeping with the team spirit of the Feinstein dealers, the meal was collaborative every step of the way. To oversee the menu and table setting, Johnson recruited the artist Simone Shubuck, who had been referred by the journalist Kim Hastreiter, a mutual friend. Because Shubuck’s culinary specialty is sculptural ice cream cakes — she’s been making them for about a year, and is also a founding member of online creative platform Wifey, which at one point had a physical pop-up featuring both edible treats and art — she called a friend from Detroit, Ben Hall, a chef who also trained as an artist, to prepare the main meal. Hall, in turn, enlisted Kiki Louya – a chef and neighbor of his who shares Hall’s commitment to food and social activism – to be his co-chef for the evening.
Dinner was to begin at 9:00 p.m., with an ample window for cocktails starting at 7:30 p.m. to account for the unavoidable traffic of Miami Art Week. Guests first gathered outside, by the pool, surrounded by a lush canopy of trees with festive lights. Coupe glasses of lychee martinis were handed out, as were small shots of carrot soup laced with lemongrass and a funky touch of toum, a Lebanese garlic paste and tiny slices of beetroot risotto arancini. “Knowing it’s a late dinner, most people will be pretty hungry; you want to give them something that will reel them in,” Louya said. “Basically, it’s like banchan: little things that are really tasty.”
Then everyone moved inside to sit at long tables stretching between the dining room, living room and foyer, where Feinstein’s piece “Happy Birthday x Rachel” (2009), a multimedia collage featuring elements of a gift from the artist Rachel Harrison and a picture of a cat hangs above the family piano. The tables were covered in fabric—decorated with vibrantly colored amorphous shapes in spray paint, acrylic paint, and Sharpie—that Shubuck had created especially for the event, inspired by Feinstein’s work (the fabrics were drop cloths from a New York hardware store, the same one Feinstein used as cloths). Shubuck also made small ceramic vessels for the table’s floral arrangements—peonies, ranunculus, and clusters of miniature veronica flowers interspersed with small green Mysore bananas and persimmons—as well as some serving dishes. The dinnerware consisted largely of pieces from Shubuck’s personal collection that she had brought in from New York: vintage yellow Richard Ginori demitasses and Steubenville and Haviland cups. “I like that kind of high-low mix, something raw and stoneware and something really beautiful,” she said.
The menu was as eclectic as the list of contributors. Coffee pepita mole was served alongside honey sriracha to accompany the main dish of lamb shank and snapper, while entrées included tahini cucumber salad with sesame and mint. “It was like a conference call between Cairo, Jalisco and Seoul, with Bangkok being overheard,” Hall said. “It’s also how we both like to eat,” added Louya, “and there are so many beautiful products in Miami that it was like being a kid in a candy store coming here from what is essentially winter in Detroit. “
The guest list included people from different sectors of the art world. There were artists like Katie Stout, who represents Johnson, and Miles Huston; curators such as Arden Sherman, of the Norton Museum of Art; Jane Hait, who recently founded the nonprofit Center for Art, Research and Alliances in New York; and various collectors of Feinstein’s work. Donahue and Hoffman were there, but the other gallerists weren’t: the Europeans weren’t in Miami, and Madey, expecting a baby shortly after Art Week, stayed in New York.
For what Shubuck called the “fireworks show at the end,” she brought out four elaborate ice cream cakes decorated with details like big flowers and giant chocolate mouths, a nod to Carvel’s cult classic Cookie Puss cake. She had lugged many of the ingredients and tools she used to make them—including a mixer—in a hockey bag from New York to Miami. Two feature a combination of chocolate and a custom pistachio amarena cherry ice cream made by Miami-based Frice Cream; the other two were flavored with passion fruit, vanilla and almonds. “There was a little show where I put them out,” Shubuck said, “so it had a performance element to it. It was like a wrap-up to a really layered and special meal. Here are some of the dinner planning strategies who helped make it memorable.
Be a good neighbor
While organizing the dinner, Johnson and her co-hosts agreed that it would be unwise to ask a Miami chef to cook during Miami Art Week. “At first we thought, ‘We know so many great chefs locally who are doing great work,'” Johnson recalls, “but of course ask a local chef or restaurateur to do something this week and open their premises. leaving your own operation is an impossible question.”
Cooking with team spirit
Friends helped put Shubuck, Hall and Louya in touch with local purveyors like Alex Meyer, a chef and owner of Miami’s acclaimed restaurant Boia De, who pointed them to nearby businesses like Paradis Books & Bread to source natural wines, including a white Grüner Veltliner and an Umbrian Sangiovese rosé; Frice Cream supplies the ice cream for Shubuck’s pies; and Blue Runner Seafood, which sells freshly caught seafood from a truck parked a few miles from the house.
To be flexible
The original plan for the evening was to serve the meal outside, with the chairs configured as one long table, but after an afternoon of intermittent rain, it was decided to move dinner indoors, where open fires and colorful furnishings dot the house. giving a warm, warm atmosphere. welcoming feeling. “In the end, it was much better to move it indoors than we ever imagined it could be outdoors,” Johnson said. “It felt cozier and friendlier and it felt more unique and specific to our space and our environment. And of course the guests were none the wiser: they showed up and it looked like it could have been in forever.”
Use local color
Johnson, who grew up about 25 miles southwest of the neighborhood where she now lives, has previously entertained foreigners at her home during Miami Art Week. The residential area is a short drive from her gallery, but away from the cacophony of the fairs. “It’s always been very important to me, as someone who was born and raised here, to show our guests, who I consider the greater population during Basel, a part of Miami that feels real,” she said.
Stick to the theme
The evening’s food was not only inspired by Feinstein’s work, but to some extent by her taste. As Johnson put it, “Rochelle is the person that when I’m in New York, we’re going to eat at the corner bar and drink a Manhattan and eat some fries,” Johnson said. “She’s not a girl who has to be on the waiting list for three months, so we wanted to make sure the menu reflected that.” Our house is not like that.”
During the planning phase of the meal, Shubuck considered whether her own charismatic signatures would outshine the guest of honor. “I paused,” Shubuck recalled. “This is her night – how much personality am I going to bring out?” Nina was like, “Full personality — it’s for her, to celebrate her.” So it was just kind of getting permission to go off. I see the whole experience as a work of art.”