Nestled within the mood light of the Jean-Georges restaurant at the Mark, or seated straight-back against a Turkish pillow in the Gallery at the Carlyle, the denizens of the Upper East Side float in a fish-bowl world.
Scandals, like personalities, are magnified. Collisions are inevitable. Yet even today, more than 15 years after her resignation from Manhattan’s eminent Knoedler gallery and the circus trial that followed, society swims away from Ann Freedman.
“She did turn heads when she walked in,” said documentary filmmaker Barry Avrich of his first encounter with Freedman over “a few bottles of expensive Montrachet Chardonnay” at the Mark, followed by dinner at Sant Ambroeus on Madison Avenue. “And people would talk. Nobody was rushing like the old days to see her. Obviously, that had to hurt. She was a pariah.”