Hasta La Ideas

Fresh from his triumphant mission to Mars, Tom Sachs has been named this year’s recipient of the Aspen Award for Art. Previous honorees include artists Roni Horn, Marilyn Minter, Fred Tomaselli, and Ed Ruscha. Sachs will pick up his honor next week during ArtCrush, a three-day benefit gala for the Aspen Art Museum (its new Shigeru Ban-designed building is slated to open in 2014) that kicks off on Wednesday with a wine-soaked soiree and culiminates in a Friday bash at the museum, where we hear that Sachs has “a special intervention” in store for gala-goers inside the tent. After a seated dinner, Oliver Barker of Sotheby’s will take the floor for a live auction of artworks by the likes of William Eggleston, Tom Friedman, and Amelie von Wulffen, who has a solo exhibition opening today at the museum (where she is this year’s Jane and Marc Nathanson Distinguished Artist in Residence). The real pocket-emptier, however, will be Sachs’s own “Poche Vide” (pictured). Completed this year, the mixed media work contains all of the tools for a modern mogul—something of an Aspen specialty—there are speakers, amplifiers, oodles of dials, a kitchen knife, and a necktie, just in case. It’s the perfect accent piece for your chic chalet-cum-rustic ski cabin.

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