The Museum Gala, the good and bad of the event

The Museum gala, the good and bad of the event..

On Saturday May 16th, the Art Museum of Puerto Rico held its yearly event at the San Juan Hotel and Casino in Isla Verde. This was the XII gala and I must say that it was a great party, with great music, great food, beautiful people and very elegant decorations.

They chose a very interesting title for the event: Horizons. Last year, they named it Metamorphosis due to the fact that it implicitly means change and this year’s name was created to communicate new goals for the future.

I have to congratulate the organizing committee for the event and everyone involved in making this gala a very successful one. It is not easy to sell a few hundred tickets at $500.00 each in today’s economic environment and they accepted the challenge and came out ahead of last year. I asked a couple of waiters and they said that there were more tables this year than there were last year. That is a very big accomplishment and I salute them for their efforts.

I was also impressed by the companies in Puerto Rico that are willing to continue supporting such an important institution as the Art Museum of Puerto Rico. Culture is so important in society and the Museum is at the heart of our culture.

These companies, and the people that attended, are so committed to the museum that when they found out that the big draw, the big attraction that was supposed to appear in the party, cancelled his appearance, no one asked for the money to be returned and no one complained.

A few days before the event, the organizers got a call with the news that their main entertainment attraction for the event, the very popular Cheyenne, was cancelling his appearance, for personal reasons. I know that any promoter of any event would panic just at the thought.

But what did the Museum leadership do? They went ahead and looked for a solution. What was the solution? To play a video from Cheyenne during the party explaining why he wasn’t there in person, a very lame reason in fact, but at least an explanation. They didn’t panic, they went ahead with the party believing, and rightly so, that people attending had the welfare of the Museum ahead of their personal feelings and that Cheyenne’s cancellation wasn’t going to affect them. Just made them a little bit unhappy.


I am positive that Cheyenne accepted to be the Gala personality many months ago and to cancel his appearance because of a family event, not an emergency mind you, simply an event, I don’t think is fair to the Museum and its board of directors.

I can’t however judge Cheyenne for his decision. Idon’t know the circumstances in his family and why he chose to abandon the event to stay with his family.

Years ago my daughter Caroline was one of the winners in the yearly US Constitutional Law competition in the US. The award was to be awarded in the US Supreme Court chambers in Washington D.C by a Supreme Court judge. No one in their right mind could have predicted that my daughter’s school was going to beat every single school in the United States. And that is exactly what happened. The finals were held on two days, the exact two days that I had been hired to work with a client in Bogota, Colombia.

There is nothing more important to me than my daughter and when I told her that I had to work in Colombia the same day of her competition, she said that my word was more important than anything else and that she expected me to comply with my commitment and not attend her event. She is such an exceptional and special human being.

On the day of the final competition, my daughter called me at the hotel in Bogota to tell me that one of the team members was having a nervous breakdown and if she didn’t get her act together, they were going to lose. My daughter said to me, “Dad, you are the only one that can get her mind straight so that she doesn’t bring us all down”. This team had made the decision that since this young girl had been working the whole year towards participating in this competition; the team wasn’t going to kick her out because she could affect the whole team. What a lesson in loyalty. The team was willing to sacrifice the final victory because they were not willing to let this girl sit out the competition and not participate.
I spent an hour with this girl on the phone and I was sure I was able to get her out of the panic state she was in. They did win the competition, so obviously my last minute intervention worked. But, I wasn’t there and I missed such an important event because I had made a commitment and your word and your credibility is the most important asset you have.


There is no question that on this occasion Cheyenne let the Museum down and the people of Puerto Rico. What I don’t know is what it meant for his son for him to be there. Lots of fathers miss their children’s events because of work. They place more importance on making money and advancing their careers than spending time with their children. And sometimes, as my daughter would say, “their children need them to be at a play more than they realize”. Men are criticized for putting their family before work and now we have the case where we are criticizing someone for putting his child first, cancelling a very important engagement. Obviously he believed that his son needed him more on this occasion than the 300 guests that paid their money to see him perform at the Museum party.

This is a touchy issue and each man or woman must act the way they see fit, but whatever anyone does, it has consequences and those have to be taken into consideration.


I just called my daughter and asked her opinion and she made an excellent point. She said that if Cheyenne is a good father who regularly attends his son’s events, he can explain the situation and the son will surely understand. She says that is what I did with her.
This is what I call the emotional bank account, an account where all the good you do for a person is stored and then when you ask for a favor or you make a withdrawal, it won’t hurt the relationship.

I rarely missed my daughter’s events. Sometimes I declined contracts in order to be with her. Never, though, did I fail to honor a contract that I had already signed.

When you commit to something, especially such an important commitment, you must keep your word, whether it hurts you or not.
Luckily, that failure on Cheyenne’s part wasn’t enough to ruin a wonderful gala, a marvelous night with great music, great dancing, great food and lots of fun. Kudos to the board of directors and everyone involved for making it happen with or without Cheyenne.