"Often people blame families for not being more involved, but schools are more likely to listen to white and upper-class parents," said Fine. "Privileged parents are listened to.
But while sharing a gallery and studio space with your best friends is dreamy, it's not exactly the norm in New York's largely white and privileged fine art scene.
Having tea with Sir Benjamin, with the sun glinting on the windowpanes and a workman toiling in the next room, I can't help thinking of that line from The Philadelphia Story: "The prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges".
WEEK IN REVIEW Starting Strong In the first volume of his autobiography, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. describes a privileged youth, a fine academic and social career and a Pulitzer Prize for history.
Traditionally, the gaze in fine art has represented a privileged access to the body, usually from that of a white male.
Sometimes it feels like these unspoken rules exist in techno or electronic music culture, but that pales heavily when compared to the circle-jerking that goes on with the extremely privileged in contemporary fine art commodity culture.
I was once privileged to witness the fine actress and comedian Karen Dunbar give the best recitation of Tam o' Shanter I have ever heard.
Better yet, read about the $5 million fine the New York Stock Exchange paid for selling privileged access to secretly selected clients.
But those who could get a ticket warmed to a night of some of the finest soccer they, or we, could be privileged to witness.
We think of it more as a quilting bee, with everyone having a chance to add a patch, and the finest patches often arising from the least privileged quilters.
Call them crazy, but the protesters still believed that if you corral thousands of privileged men and throw in some fine wine and a few s'mores, they cannot help but make valuable connections and, occasionally, public policy.
