A celebrity-supported art show on behalf of Ukraine

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we will find out about an art exhibition benefiting Ukraine, which has a lot of celebrity support. We’ll also find out where Concorde, the once-glamorous supersonic jet, has been for the past six months while we’ve done some work.

The actor and producer Joseph Feury has had a second career, as a painter who signs his canvases Joseph Fioretti, his birth name. When he started thinking about an exhibition of his works a few months ago, his wife said, “Why don’t you do it for Ukraine and donate the proceeds?”

His wife is Lee Grant, who starred in films such as ‘Detective Story’ and ‘In the Heat of the Night’ and in the television series ‘Peyton Place’. For her, Ukraine had a personal connection: her mother had fled the strategic port city of Odesa at the age of twelve, during a brutal Russian pogrom that claimed hundreds of Jewish lives.

Grant said this had fueled a passion to support President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine against Russia.

Odesa became a flashpoint in the current conflict last week when Russia launched a missile attack while Zelensky and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece were there, visiting the sites of previous Russian attacks and paying tribute to the victims.

Fioretti has taken Grant’s advice about his art show, and tonight “Fioretti – Family, Friends & Flowers” opens at the Ukrainian Institute of America, 2 East 79th Street. Listed as co-hosts on the invitation are people who appeared in Feury’s films and other projects, including Joy Behar, Judy Collins, Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, Verino Pettinaro, Gloria Steinem, Marlo Thomas, Brenda Vaccaro and Peter Yarrow.

Sean Penn — who was also listed as a co-host and who co-directed the war documentary “Superpower” with Aaron Kaufman — introduced Fioretti to Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, who is expected to host a reception tonight to attend .

Fioretti said he hoped to bring attention back to the ongoing conflict. “The Israeli crisis with Hamas has taken the eyes off Ukraine,” he said. “Maybe we can bring back some eyes.” He said he had raised $40,000 from friends to organize the show, along with $100,000 that would go to the Ukrainian Institute for Humanitarian Work, mainly in trauma centers.

“I only do work that catches my attention and moves me, whether it’s a portrait, whether it’s a house or something like that,” he said. “It has to grab me, and I know immediately, that I want to spend so much time discovering it and doing it.” He turned the dining room in his and Grant’s apartment into a studio, with brown paper on the floor, for when he worked with pastels. He works in a studio in the city center for oil painting projects.

“It was very easy to link everything to Ukraine,” he said. “I married a blacklisted ex-actress with deep political views, and in the 60 years we’ve been together I’ve picked up those views. When Putin invaded Ukraine, I knew that something was terribly wrong morally and that it was internationally dangerous.”

One of the canvases he painted for the show is a portrait of Zelensky, with the bright yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Eight others are images of sunflowers, a symbol of Ukrainian solidarity — during the 2022 State of the Union address, Jill Biden, the first lady, wore a Sally LaPointe dress with an embroidered sunflower on the wrist. Sunflowers were also an important part of the Ukrainian economy: before the war crippled crops, Ukraine was the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil.

“All flowers are easy for me,” said Fioretti, standing next to a canvas of sunflowers on a Klimt-esque background of gold and silver leaf.

The bright yellow of the sunflowers belies a fact about Feury: He is color blind, something he said he didn’t know until he took an Army eye test in 1959. “The biggest obstacle is that I can’t tell the difference between dark blue and dark gray,” he said. “I just live with it. I always walk in where Lee is and say, “What color is this?”

Weather

Enjoy a mostly sunny day with temperatures in the low 60s. At night, be aware that there is a chance of showers and temperatures can drop into the low 50s.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until March 24 (Purim).

The latest New York news

The Concorde, which was retired by British Airways more than two decades ago, has spent the past six months at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was freshened up with a new coat of paint that was supposed to look the same as the coat of paint that had been removed.

This morning it floats back to the aircraft carrier-turned-museum at Pier 86 after spending the previous night in a shipyard in Jersey City.

The only way to reach the Intrepid is to float on a barge. The engines were removed before it went to the museum, so it can’t fly, and even if it still has the huge turbojets, Manhattan has no runways for it to land on.

If you’re driving in from Brooklyn, this would also be a problem. It’s too wide for the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel or the Brooklyn Bridge.

The result? A ballet of ships. The Concorde will ride on one, while another essentially rides shotgun. “You don’t want a wing hanging over the side of the ship and being 15 to 20 feet away” — just far enough so that it can hit something along the way, Woods said. The empty ship next to the ship with the Concorde offers a safety margin.

The Concorde will be lifted into place in the cockpit of the Intrepid by a 90-metre crane. For this purpose, a pontoon is maneuvered out of the way with a shorter crane. That ship worked to rebuild the pier, which was largely completed while the Concorde was away, replacing 180 feet of pilings in the water.

Woods wanted them in place before the Concorde arrived home. “I didn’t want to lift that over the Concorde,” he said.

METROPOLITAN diary

Full hands

Dear Diary:

I was on the F train into town when a young man with a large pizza and a small dog got on at 34th Street and sat next to me.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Where are you getting off?”

Roosevelt Island, I said.

“Do you mind holding my pizza until then?” he asked.

I must have looked at him funny.

“I have a new girlfriend,” he said, “and I wanted to impress her, so my dog ​​and I took the train to New Haven this morning so I could buy her a real Frank Pepe pizza.”

“I’ve been wearing it for hours,” he continued, “and my dog ​​needs my attention.”

He handed me the pizza and sat the dog on his lap.

“What does it say?” I have asked.

“Sausage and mushrooms,” he said. “Her favorite.”

“Mine too,” I said.

– Elisabeth Rosenberg

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send your entries here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.