07/19/2010 12:00 am
Culture
Christy Turlington – 41 Years Young and Loving Life
Also from our Liz, a new controversy in the Hamptons.
Christy Turlington/Image courtesy of Robin Platzer/Twin Images
"The Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct," wrote that cynical philosopher W. Somerset Maugham.
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Can you name "the big six" of the ’90s? I’m talking supermodels. They were Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Linda Evangelista.
Now, Christy speaks: "I used to think my looks were a curse when I was 18 and my looks were what I was. It did feel very limiting. But modeling gave me the kind of confidence a lot of girls in their teenage years don’t have. The industry saved me from having to be self-conscious."
Christy, now 41, works with the humanitarian Christian Action Research and Education group, as an advocate for maternal health. She has a documentary coming, "No Woman No Cry." She spends summers in the Hamptons with her husband, Ed Burns, and children. She has a master’s degree in public health.
"Getting older is baggage for so many people but I don’t spend time on things I can’t control … there are more pressures on actresses these days than models. We’re being celebrated for being older at the moment. I get asked to do campaigns all the time that aren’t designed for a 41-year-old and I feel good about accepting those jobs."
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GOOD NEWS among the bad. U.S. scientists believe they may have discovered a "universal flu vaccine" that would protect against many strains of the virus. It’s only a few years away; say, maybe 2013. This would be a "one jab fits all" and early safety trials have already started. In Bethesda, MD, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is very excited about these results.
And a team in Scotland has discovered a gene that causes breast cancer to spread though the body. This means one in five suffering breast cancer, might be helped when diagnosed as HER2 positive. Drugs are in the pipeline that could stop the spread.
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If you are running around hiking and trying to scale even insignificant mountain peaks, take care and don’t do it in flip-flops, Crocs or Ugg boots. Mountain rescue teams say their efforts are hindered by the numbers of people they’re called on to rescue who have on inappropriate footwear. The average hiker/mountain climber also doesn’t carry enough water. You hear that, you vacationers?!
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THE ITALIANS are getting serious. They just arrested more than 300 people and confiscated millions of dollars recently in the biggest police operation in 15 years against the Mafia in Calabria and Milan.
They targeted something called the ‘Ndrangheta, which takes its name from the Greek word "virtue." And they targeted the senior man in Lombardy, where the Mafia invests its money in legit enterprises. (The ‘Ndrangheta’s take is so large it equals almost three percent of Italy’s gross domestic product.)
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There is a controversy in the Hamptons – isn’t there always? This concerns the century-old Parrish Art Museum, right in the heart of Southampton on Job’s Lane. It has announced that it will vacate its stately home and move to a futuristic barn hanger-type building to be erected out on a former potato field.
The architects Herzog and de Meuron are to design the Parrish’s new home and it will house the Samuel Longstreth Parrish collection of Greek and Roman statues, the Littlejohn collection of American paintings by such as Thomas Moran, William Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam.
Though some members don’t want to give up the old Job’s Lane museum space, there they were the other eve dancing the night away to honor painter Ross Bleckner. Arts patron Beth Rudin deWoody (one of my own personal favorite heiresses) … Mildred Brinn, Frank and Victoria Wyman, Anne Hearst and Jay McInerney, Campion and Tatiana Platt, Robert Zimmermann, Deborah Bancroft, Eric Fischl and April Gornik, Hunt Slonem, Geoffrey Bradfield, Jon and Somers Farkas – well, you get the picture. They were having a ball. Even painter Chuck Close was in his elevated wheelchair wheeling through the crowd.
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Ms. Turlington has always been a classy, smart, well-balanced woman. Now that’s MY idea of a supermodel. (And to think: she managed to reach 2010 without throwing a cell phone at an assistant’s head! Amazing!)
I love the Parrish, but it has definitely outgrown its Job’s Lane quarters. I also love your idea about maintaining the Job’s site as a little, soothing park! I don’t get out to the Hamptons much, but the last time I did go, I went into what I thought was a simple deli to purchase a sandwich and some water. $22.00 later, I reeled outside and plopped onto a bench. The sandwich was great, but on the other hand, so’s a two-dollar slice with pepperoni at just about any NYC pizzeria. The Hamptons are truly the province of those who dwell in cloud cuckoo land. As my grandfather used to say, "Some people have more money than brains." Lots of smart, wealthy folks DO dwell in the Hamptons, but when it comes to an eighteen-dollar smoked turkey sandwich … I wonder.
Important corrections to your item on the Parrish Art Museum, the Caesars will remain in Southampton Village: The original collection of Samuel Parrish—including the Caesars, marble and plaster copies of Greek and Roman Art, and early Italian Renaissance paintings—will remain at the Jobs Lane site. Both the original collection, including the Caesars, and the Jobs Lane building itself are the property of the Village of Southampton. The Parrish Art Museum’s permanent collection, which consists of more than 2600 objects ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present, including substantial holdings of work by American Impressionist William Merritt Chase and twentieth-century American realist Fairfield Porter, will move to the new Herzog & de Meuron building on the Water Mill site in 2012. It was, indeed, under the stewardship of Mrs. Rebecca Bolling Littlejohn that the Museum’s mission became the collection of American art, with a particular focus on the art of Eastern Long Island. Lastly, the Parrish’s recent Midsummer Gala honored Beth Rudin DeWoody, as well as Ross Bleckner.