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West Side Story - The Whitney went downtown for its annual American Art Award Gala, which meant more open collars than usual and extra talk of the future. The dinner took place, after all, on part of the plot in the Meatpacking District that the museum hopes someday to turn into a 200,000-square-foot southern branch. The evening raised a total of $1.6 million. With an estimated budget of $680 million for the new outpost, the museum that gave Jasper Johns and Cindy Sherman their first retrospectives has a ways to go. But it's also got friends in the right places—including Diane von Furstenberg, who hosted the cocktail hour at her studio up the street. Having thrown events there five nights in a row, the designer said she's finally letting the space go dark for a while: "Thank God!" From there, the group—which included Larry Gagosian and John McEnroe—migrated two blocks south to the dinner tent, which had been outfitted for the occasion with colorful hanging panels by the artists Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker. "This feels like a school trip," mused Alice St. Clair Erskine. (Well, a school trip with Anh Duong, Caroline Winberg, and Shala Monroque.) Ever the student, Lady Alice was sporting her grandfather's Eton waistcoat; she'd even turned down an invite to Monday's Met ball to practice line readings for an upcoming audition. During dinner, Alex von Furstenberg accepted the evening's big award on behalf of the Diller—von Furstenberg Family Foundation, which has helped the museum get a foothold in the neighborhood. Lou Reed performed. Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg said goodbye to the tent: "I hope you'll be here when the circus leaves and the art comes back." And then another major player in this developing West Side story, André Balazs, led the way to the top of the Standard.—Darrell Hartman [Style]