(Bloomberg) -- Last year's key annual benefit for the New York Public Library featured anxious supporters of both political parties on the eve of Donald Trump's election. On Monday night, this year's Library Lions event had a more vibrant mood.
Donald Marron of Lightyear Capital offered one explanation: The stock market is near a record high. "But of course, the good economy is very substantially because of Obama. It didn't all happen in the last year."
Anthony Marx, the library's president, offered another: Donors' enthusiasm for its mission seems to have swelled. This past year will be the best for private fundraising in the history of the library, Marx said. (That amount is $133.8 million.)
Or maybe they just throw a good party -- if titans and poets mixing over gravlax and beef bourguignon, and lining up to get books signed by authors sounds like fun. It would be hard to top dining in the Rose Reading Room with its shelves of books about two blocks long, luminous sky painted on the ceiling and skyscraper views through giant arched windows.
At the very same tables used to research books and term papers, were Blackstone Group's Steve Schwarzman, Tony James and Michael Chae; Chris Kojima of Goldman Sachs; Boaz Weinstein of Saba Capital; Berkshire Hathaway's Ajit Jain; David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker; writers Zadie Smith and Tom Wolfe; poet Elizabeth Alexander; and the actors Frank Langella and Harry Lennix.
In a video featuring 2017's class of Library Lions, author Colson Whitehead said he likes to write at home so he can break for naps. Michael Chabon and Tom Brokaw said they write well on airplanes. The other honorees were Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and experimental theater impresario Robert Wilson.
A few blocks away, Leon Black, Alex Rodriguez, Philip Falcone and Keith Meister were at a Prostate Cancer Foundation benefit showcasing a new program supporting treatment of veterans.
Thomas H. Lee mingled in one corner of Cipriani 42nd Street with some NYU Langone doctors he has supported. Michael Milken, PCF's founder, posed for a photograph with Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, and called him “an excellent pick” by the Trump administration.
Milken said he hadn't heard of "Junk," the play he helped inspire about a junk bond king in the 1980s, now playing at Lincoln Center Theater and written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar.
To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell
©2017 Bloomberg L.P.
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