The Catalina Museum for Art and History invited Artillery for its 70th anniversary fundraiser and art auction. Who knew, maybe we could bid on some donated art and enjoy a day trip for a good cause. The rather large Spanish-tiled building—surrounded by vacation-rental cottages in LA’s weekend playground, Avalon—was hosting a Margaritaville for the generation who no longer parties in bikinis at the disco on the sand around the bend.

It could have been surmised, I suppose, that the kind of art represented would be the sea and landscape paintings one encounters in such beachy locales, and, indeed, there was a handsome array of these decoratively hung in matching gilded frames in the entry hall. These would be the variety of auctioned off works later in the evening.

Patrons were warmed up with alcohol and encouraged to put on funny hats and feather boas—which could have been high concept Mike Kelleyesque farce, but wasn’t—and bid on baskets of local trinkets and things across the way.

The dress code was Hawaiian shirts and entertainment included a stilt walker, magician and caricaturist accompanied by the Catalina Cool Cats playing oldies and Hendrix solos on violin. It was a local tribute to the trustees and was sweet in its home-spun gala-rama way.

Surely all art is somehow subject to the pockets and inclinations of its institutions and patrons.

Here, it was a matter of an upscale Afishinados (a nearby gallery of sorts specializing in, yep, fish-themed work), for a crowd who could spell hors d’oeuvres, maybe, and liked their stuff uncomplicated, outside of what might be served up on the mainland.