BROOKLYN, NY.- Inferno, The Sixteenth Annual Watermill Summer Benefit, in support of artistic programming at the Watermill Center, will be held on July 25, 2009. Each summer, visionary artist and theater director Robert Wilson hosts this extraordinary event. Wilson conceives the Benefit as a theatrical production, offering its high-profile guests a uniquely "Wilsonian", theater-like experience. Inferno will create a vision of a place that excites you, tempts you, attracts you, teases you, caresses you, overwhelms you and seduces you.
Evening events begin at 6 pm and include cocktails followed by an outdoor seated dinner, a live auction of major artworks presented by Simon de Pury, and after-dinner dancing. Site-specific works by emerging international artists are installed throughout Watermill's main building and its six-acre wooded grounds. Guests enjoy this unique opportunity to view works by the artists-in-residence of the Watermill Summer Program. Guests also bid on more than 60 works by important artists such as Matthew Barney, Willem de Kooning, Neo Rauch and Lisa Yuskavage in a silent auction on view throughout the evening.

Confirmed Honorary Co-Chairs include Marina Abramovic, Laurie Anderson, Kim Cattrall, Lou Reed, and Rufus Wainwright. Past attendees include Richard Gere, Annie Leibovitz, Isabella Rossellini, Kim Cattrall, Dita Von Teese, Julia Stiles, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Howard Stern, Bill Paxton, Larry Gagosian, Steve Buscemi, and Roger Waters.