The new Art Museum of Sonoma County’s Studio 54 Party was the weekend’s hottest ticket—ARThound shares pics

Renata Baranow and Lovell Travis of Portland, Oregon, party the night away at Saturday’s Studio 54 party at the new Art Museum of Sonoma Count. Baranow, from Portland, was part of a group of guests flown from Oregon by Jordan Schnitzer, the Portland real estate developer who has loaned dozens of artworks, some iconic, to the Sonoma County Museum. Lovell Travis is a pilot who flew Schnitzer’s party down from Portland for the festivities.

The floor was crowded as people fell into their groove.

Jennifer Cobb and Stephen Isenberg of Santa Rosa, SCM members.

Elizabeth Deming (15) and mom, Diane Evans, executive director Sonoma County Museum. Bravo Diane!

Diane Evans, executive director Sonoma County Museum, and daughter Elizabeth Deming. Diane made the most watched list in a little white dress that screamed Warhol muse.

DJ Mancub (Chip Corwin), one of San Francisco’s premiere DJ’s, set the mood with a steady flow of danceable memorabilia on vintage vinyl.

Bryant Key of Oakland helped set-up the sound system for DJ Mancub and then rocked the floor.

Christina Russo and Karen Anderson pouring bubbly and fine estate wines.

The Morales family of Santa Rosa—Erin John and daughter Taylor (visiting from UCLA)—admire John Baldessari’s mixed graphic “Stonehenge (with Two Persons) Blue” (2005) (edition 12/60). After attending the party and seeing the new collection, the family made the decision to join SCM.

Photographer and SRJC professor Renata Breth and her former digital photography student, Katie Azanza, SCM’s new Manager of Operations in the new art museum. Directly behind them is Robert Indiana’s “Four Panel Love,” whose red, white and blue letters were later reproduced on a U.S.P.S. postage stamp.

Andy Warhol’s legendary “Campbell’s Soup Cans,” which Warhol first exhibited in 1962, stopped many guests dead in their tracks. The iconic artwork is a lynchpin of Jordan Schnitzer’s collection of contemporary art. Warhol claimed that the Campbell’s Soup Can was his favorite work and that, “I should have just done the Campbell’s Soups and kept on doing them … because everybody only does one painting anyway.” The signature image was created during the year that Pop Art emerged as the major new artistic movement and is a key transitional work from Warhol’s hand-painted to photo-transferred paintings.

Photographer and SRJC Photography Professor, Renata Breth, examines Kara Walker’s roomsize cut-paper silhouette mural, “The Means to An End…A Shadow Drama in Five Acts,” (1995) which uses provocative imagery and simple black and white cutouts to comment on racism, sex, violence, and black history. “She’s so consistent with her ideas and execution, said Breth. “This piece is acting on many levels to engage our senses.”

Steve and Jill Plamann admire Forestville artist, Joel Bennett’s, ceramic moon vessel which garnered the most bids in the silent fundraising auction in the upstairs gallery. Plamann owns Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg.