Whitney Museum Cake

 Event Photography by Filip Wolak, courtesy Virginia Overton and the Whitney Museum 

I was thrilled and delighted when I was asked by renowned sculptor and installation artist Virginia Overton to produce a cake of the Whitney Museum for her presentation as part of the Whitney's ongoing series 99 objects.

Above: VIDEO excerpts of the event shot by our good friend, Boaz Halaban

Named in honor of the Whitney’s new address, 99 Gansevoort Street, 99 Objects is a series of in-gallery programs focusing on individual works of art from the Museum’s collection on view as part of the exhibition America Is Hard to See . 

Speakers include artists, writers, Whitney curators and educators, and an interdisciplinary group of scholars. Programs take place daily.

Where to start? The first cut is the hardest... (the royal icing front railings are already down, and I love how they became like sprinkles around the base of cake)

Ah, What a delicious museum!

Special thank you to 

Cake assistants: Sara Porter, María Tillous, Kanupriya Kesari

 Architectural consultant: Mané Nalbandyan

 Intern: Remy Stankus.  

Also to Ryan Oskin, Hillel Katz, Larry Krone, Matthew Griffin, David Levinthal and of course, Virginia Overton.

Part 2- and now for any cake nerds out there... the making of the cake:

Before the delivery.  A thunder-stormy, cobble-stoney delivery.  Thanks to Ryan, the cake arrived just fine. (perhaps a little tiny bit worse for wear.)

Pieces of cake buildings and Rice Krispie treat balconies

Attaching the royal icing railings and finishing details on location

Sketches made to scale the size of the cake and lots of photos for reference

Mané spent several days, first finding 3D renderings on line to print our 3D model from, and creating at least a dozen pages of block dimensions, footprints and detailing dimensions

The cake was covered in white chocolate fondant rolled out into large panels

Watching the building get served up, while in the building was very cool!

Printing out a 3D model was key to figuring out the shapes of the building.