Blank Forms 4th Annual Gala Honoring Neneh Cherry

BENEFIT COMMITTEE: Vera Alemani, Ephraim Asili, Matthew Barney, Olivier and Desiree Berggruen, Shumita and Arani Bose, Garrett Bradley, Stephen Cheng, The Cheswatyr Foundation, Denardo Coleman, John Corbett, Lauren Cornell, Paul Cossu, Jim Dempsey, Laura Belgray and Steven Eckler, Gladstone Gallery, Maxwell Graham, Carol Greene, Jane Hait and Justin Beal, Charline von Heyl, Sanya Kantarovsky, Naima Karlsson, Ruba Katrib, Jade Lai and Seth Zucker, Arto Lindsay, Joe McPhee, Turid Meeker, Ikue Mori, Louise Neri, Michelle Joan Papillion, Jeff Preiss and Zeena Parkins, Lucy Raven, David Reed, Rachel Rose and Ian Cheng, Cameron Rowland, Eliza Ryan, Jay Sanders, Kim Schnaubert, Felicity Scott, Debra Singer and Jay Worthington, Michael Stipe, Lauren and Benedikt Taschen, Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner, Arden Wohl, Christopher Wool

BLANK FORMS BOARD OF DIRECTORS: David Grubbs, Robbie Lee, Nadia Berenstein, Margo Somma, Moriah Evans, Joe Grimm, Hannah Hoffman, Lawrence Kumpf, Alexander Lau, Josiah McElheny, Marina Rosenfeld, Jacques Louis Vidal, Andros Zins-Browne

Click here to view our online benefit exhibition, Eternal Now. 

On Thursday, November 18th, Blank Forms presents its fourth annual benefit gala, honoring the acclaimed singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry. Please join us for an evening of cocktails and dinner, and a series of special performances in celebration of Neneh and the enduring legacy of the Cherry family.

There are few artists so completely on the pulse of their time as Neneh Cherry. In the more than three decades since her seismic debut album, Raw Like Sushi (Virgin Records, 1989), Cherry has conquered the pop charts, propelled trip-hop into the mainstream, and collaborated with a staggering list of global icons—including Robyn, Massive Attack, Honey Dijon, and Youssou N’Dour, to name just a few. By then, Cherry had already cut her teeth as a teenager in London’s post-punk circuit, playing with The Slits and fronting Rip Rig + Panic after leaving school and touring with her stepfather, the avant-garde jazz and world music icon Don Cherry. 

A sonic force, shaped in part by global styles and a youth spent traversing Sweden, London, and New York, Cherry stands as a singular performer across her kaleidoscopic output. She came of age in the radically creative world envisioned by Don and her mother, visual artist and designer Moki Cherry. In the 1970s, Don and Moki forged a dazzling collaborative practice that championed community and the power of music to bring people together across differences. Neneh played an integral role in our recent exhibition, Organic Music Societies: Don and Moki Cherry, which explored this generative period of creativity, and it is profoundly meaningful for us to celebrate the Cherry legacy through Neneh’s own significant contributions to the music world.

In recent projects, Cherry has returned to familial roots. Her fiery, jazz-lacquered album The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound, 2012), a collaboration with Scandinavian trio The Thing, includes a cover of Don’s 1966 track “Golden Heart,” and Blank Project (Smalltown Supersound, 2014) is a searing, intimate tribute to her late mother, Moki. With her incisive lyrics and raw, ever-perceptive style, Cherry speaks to the world around her—her latest record, Broken Politics (Smalltown Supersound, 2018) reflects on social unrest—and to her resounding influences, conjuring many of Don and Moki’s own collaborators and close friends, including free jazz legend Ornette Coleman and poet and performer Jayne Cortez.

If a through-line can be found in her decades-spanning and genre-smashing career, it is Cherry’s uncanny ability to sense her moment, and to meditate on it with effortless cool, a forward-looking gaze, and her radically prescient sound.

Our gala raises crucial funds for new commissions, public programs, publishing and archival initiatives. After a challenging year in the performing arts, this gala will be particularly meaningful to us, bringing together our community of artists and supporters in person for the first time since 2019.

$25,000 Honoree Table (10 tickets)

• Priority front row table for ten guests with table service, dinner and drinks
• Complimentary Blank Forms All-Access memberships for all ten guests
• Complimentary Blank Forms tote bags and all 2021 Blank Forms publications for all ten guests
• Special name recognition on the Benefit Committee list in print and online
• *$23,900 tax deductible

HONOREE TABLE

$10,000 Benefactor Table (10 tickets)

• Priority table for ten guests with table service, dinner and drinks
• Complimentary Blank Forms Friend memberships for all ten guests
• Complimentary Blank Forms tote bags and Blank Forms anthology for all ten guests
• Special name recognition on the benefit committee list in print and online
• *$9,160 tax deductible

BENEFACTOR TABLE
 

$7,500 Patron Table (10 tickets)

• Table for ten guests with table service, dinner and drinks
• Complimentary Blank Forms All-Access membership for two
• Complimentary Blank Forms tote bags and Blank Forms anthology for all ten guests
• Name recognition on the benefit committee list in print and online
• *$6,660 tax deductible

PATRON TABLE

$2,500 Honoree Ticket(s)
$1,000 Benefactor Ticket(s)
$750 Patron Ticket(s)
$500 Ticket(s)

*the non-deductible portion is $80 / ticket

Table purchases can be paid for by check (preferred), credit card, or through PayPal. Please contact Julia Trotta at julia@blankforms.org for purchases or refunds.

The deadline for name recognition in print is November 1st, 2021. Unable to attend? Make a 100% tax-deductible donation here or sponsor an artist with a ticket or table.