{"id":233860,"date":"2026-04-10T23:23:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T23:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/maurizio-cattelans-latest-conceptual-masterpiece-a-silent-dinner-in-chicago\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T23:23:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T23:23:33","slug":"maurizio-cattelans-latest-conceptual-masterpiece-a-silent-dinner-in-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/maurizio-cattelans-latest-conceptual-masterpiece-a-silent-dinner-in-chicago\/","title":{"rendered":"Maurizio Cattelan\u2019s Latest Conceptual Masterpiece? A Silent Dinner in Chicago."},"content":{"rendered":"


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And so, years later, she asked him to plan her benefit, not knowing that he\u2019d come up with a confab for raising money in which not a single soul was allowed to speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs often happens with Maurizio, my brain eventually caught up to his. And once it did, I thought it was brilliant,\u201d she said. \u201cThe challenge was not whether the idea worked conceptually. It absolutely did. The challenge was whether we could persuade people to get out of their comfort zone and embrace it. But honestly, that is very much what this event is about every year: asking people to suspend expectation and give themselves over to an artist\u2019s logic for one night.\u201d<\/p>\n

I arrived at the Chicago Athletic Association<\/a> early for a cocktail party on the roof that was hosted by the New York and Los Angeles gallery Karma, which was doing the fair for the first time. Immediately below us was that icon of Chicago public art, Anish Kapoor\u2019s Cloud Gate,<\/em> affectionately (or not) known around here as The Bean. Lake Michigan extended beyond the horizon line like an ocean. The shimmers and swoops of Frank Gehry\u2019s Jay Pritzker Pavilion peeked out over the trees on one end, and the Art Institute\u2019s assembly of gray boxes, as seen from the sky, were planted on the other. Speaking of the Pritzkers, a primer: John Pritzker is part-owner of the hotel that\u2019s taken over the Athletic Association, the family has the world\u2019s preeminent architecture prize named after them, and they are some of the city\u2019s biggest collectors\u2014and one of them is the governor.<\/p>\n

After checking in at the lobby, I snagged a notebook, a necessary implement for the night, and immediately ran into Cattelan, who was wearing sunglasses indoors, a RenBen T-shirt, and a glass for champagne hanging from his neck.<\/p>\n

\u201cHi, it\u2019s Nate Freeman, from Vanity Fair,<\/em>\u201d I wrote in the notebook.<\/p>\n

\u201cI GOT UR QSTNS! TOO MANY!\u201d Cattelan wrote in my notebook in response.<\/p>\n

We conducted the interview there, in person, our pens chicken-scratching onto paper, with questions left to be answered\u2014also silently!\u2014in the following hours, over email. Cattelan barely gives any interviews. Has he ever conducted an interview quite like this before?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot in person. The closest is texting. This is slower, more exposed. You can\u2019t hide behind tone or speed. It\u2019s like texting, but you can\u2019t pretend you didn\u2019t get the message.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve used silence as a tool before\u2014what makes saying nothing so effective sometimes?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSilence removes shortcuts. What\u2019s left is harder to manage, but harder to fake. Sometimes it becomes protest\u2014like Gandhi. Saying nothing, together, can be louder than shouting. And sometimes, not speaking is the most precise way to avoid lying.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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And so, years later, she asked him to plan her benefit, not knowing that he\u2019d come up with a confab for raising money in which not a single soul was allowed to speak. \u201cAs often happens with Maurizio, my brain eventually caught up to his. And once it did, I thought it was brilliant,\u201d she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[225,944,226],"class_list":{"0":"post-233860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-true-colors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}