Wet Paint In The Wild: Anna Delvey Rings in the New Year With a House Party Attended by Artists, Models, and Heiresses (the Real Kind)

Annie Armstrong January 6, 2023 ShareShare This Article

Welcome to Wet Paint in the Wild, the freewheeling—and free!—spinoff of Artnet News Pro’s beloved Wet Paint gossip column, where we give art-world insiders a disposable camera to chronicle their lives on the circuit. To read the latest Wet Paint column, click here (members only).

Who is Anna Delvey, you ask? Great question! To some, she is a blue-chip con-artist who scammed hundreds of thousands of dollars from New York City’s elite including Michael Xufu Huang, Aby Rosen, and Nadine Johnson, among others. To others, she is a case study on the psychological affects of late capitalism, the current state of the American Dream, and the unchecked excess of the super-wealthy. To a few, she is an emerging artist on the scene, hawking her pencil drawings for $30,000 a pop.

To me, she’s my new neighbor, who has been on house arrest in the East Village since last October and invited me to her New Year’s Eve party. Naturally, I brought along a few disposable cameras and plopped them in her hands, and here’s what she got back to me with. But first, a brief introduction from Ms. Delvey/Sorokin herself:

Being on house arrest can sometimes be boring—that’s why this holiday season I had no choice but to have people over at my East Village apartment while my immigration case is making its way through the system. [The] following images are a small glimpse into the brief time of the year when only die-hard New Yorkers remain in town. It was fun—no one got arrested, hospitalized or murdered—what more can I ask for?

Without further ado…