Scene City - The Parrish Art Museum's Summer Benefit - NYTimes.com Pillars of the Hamptons art scene came out in support including, from left, Alice Aycock, Dorothy Lichtenstein and Agnes Gund. Several years ago, when the honchos of the Parrish Art Museum reviewed blueprints for a new building in Water Mill, N.Y., they knew it would be an ideal place for their summer benefit. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, in a field off Route 27, it has double-wide barn proportions and lots of outdoor space. "With the covered breezeways and huge terrace, we don't even need to put up a tent anymore," said Terrie Sultan, the museum's director, as guests arrived for the Midsummer Party on Saturday. We have thousands of square feet for entertaining. It was the museum's first summer gala in the new building, and a stunningly costly one, even by Hamptons standards, with tickets starting at an "aluminum" level of $1,500 and "steel" tables topping at $50,000. "We deserve it because this is how we pay for this place," said Deborah Bancroft, a host committee member. The 575 happy, tan and sleek guests seemed to get their money's worth, as they swilled cocktails and snapped up canapés. The art patron Beth Rudin DeWoody mingled with the dealer Andrea Rosen, whose artist Josephine Meckseper had installed several sculptures. Eric Javits, Nicole Miller, Agnes Gund, Robert Wilson and Christophe de Menil milled about, too. Spirits were high even if the coiffures were lower than usual. "It's definitely not the helmet-hair crowd we used to get," Ms. Bancroft said. No Hamptons party is complete without some kvetching about traffic, parking and etiquette. "There are no back roads out here anymore," said James Frey, the author, who had seethed on the drive west from Amagansett. Another guest complained about a driver holding up traffic while texting in the middle of Southampton Village. And Kathy Hilton, a Southampton resident and mother of you-know-who, fumed about a public display of kissing that she witnessed earlier between a young woman and a much older man. "It's inappropriate to do that in public," she said with authority. Dinner was served outside under the museum's generous roof with banquet tables that seemed as long as football fields. They were graced with low centerpieces with the same grasses and wildflowers as the surrounding meadow (minus the ticks). The soup was golden gazpacho; the striped bass was in parchment, and cut ceremoniously by a line of waiters in white. "Gorgeous," Ms. Hilton said. For the after-party, 400 additional guests mobbed the black-box theater to dance, and then hit the galleries and corridors while preening, tweeting and cooling off with rum ice pops. The artist Donald Sultan smiled. "The party and the building are just beautiful," he said, as he looked across the fog-covered 14-acre field. Fuzzy opalescent headlights dotted one of the most congested rural roads in the world. And so is watching the traffic from here. Miraculously, it was moving.