New York, Chicago 'Lionize' library angels.(library fund raising events)

The week before officially reopening after a year's worth of refurbishment, the Rose Main Reading Room of New York Public Library's Center for the Humanities became the venue for the library's annual Library Lions dinner, which drew several hundred people and $1.7 million in donations. The costs of staging the event were underwritten by the evening's seven benefit chairpersons, who included Oscar de la Renta and his wife Annette.

The November 9 event was a formal Elizabethan-style dinner party that garnered a minimum of $1,500 per plate from several hundred attendees, including former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, George Plimpton, and Bianca Jagger. This year's designated "lion" honorees (who are selected for the special cultural or volunteer link each has to one of NYPL's five library divisions) were author/historian Shelby Foote (Center for the Humanities); IBM CEO and honorary NYPL trustee Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (Science, …