9/28/98 

MET COSTUME GALA 
The premiere party of New York's fall season is the Metropolitan Museum's 1998 Costume Institute benefit, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. The theme of the gala dinner dance, on Dec. 7, is "Cubism and fashion." It is co-chaired by the designer Miuccia Prada, collector and Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo founder Paula Cussi and Sephora creative ambassador Pia Getty. The exhibition, "Cubism and Fashion," opens on Dec. 10 and features designs by Madeleine Vionnet, Callot Soeurs and Gabrielle Chanel, among others. Dinner tickets are $2,000 per person; dance tickets are $200 per person in advance or $300 at the door. For ticket information call Kristin MacDonald at (212) 570-3948. 
 
WHITNEY SNAGS $6 MILLION FROM INTEL 
The Whitney Museum has received $6 million from the Intel Corporation to fund "The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000," a massive, nine-month-long show of 1,400 works planned to open on Apr. 22, 1999. The exhibition is to include a high-end website as well as an on-site computer room. The $6-million gift is perhaps the largest ever for a single show, and certainly the first big-league donation received by the Whitney in recent memory. Isn't it interesting that it came a month after director David Ross left the museum and was replaced by wire-head Maxwell Anderson? 

GHOST RANCH TO O'KEEFFE MUSEUM 
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe has gotten the artist's Ghost Ranch for use as an O'Keeffe study center. Board chair Anne W. Marion announced that the Burnett Foundation of Fort Worth had bought the house for $300,000, with an additional $350,000 going to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in exchange for its option to buy the profit. The house was inherited by sculptor Juan Hamilton from O'Keeffe in 1987.