CONTEMPORARY COOL: St. Louis’ boldface crowd turned out by the hundreds to celebrate the Contemporary Art Museum’s fifth anniversary last night at the Four Seasons Hotel.

“I think this has become my favorite museum in the country,” Aileen Agopian, guest auctioneer and director of Contemporary Art, Philips de Pury & Company, NYC, gushed from the auctioneer’s stand.

One of the highlights of the night was when Stan Chisholm, a graduate of the museum’s New Art in the Neighborhood program and currently a fourth-year student at the Art Institute of Chicago, took the stage to thank the staff for encouraging him as an artist and for continuing to keep tabs on his progress.

Chisholm is one of nine children with a single mother who would not have been able to attend art school if a scholarship had not been provided for him.

Among the A-listers who were in the room: U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and her husband, Joe Shepard; Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and her husband, Juan Carlos Antolinez; Emily Pulitzer; Nancy and Ken Kranzberg; Dorte and Jim Probstein; Tom and Mary Friedman and their children Oliver, Sophie and Emma; Tom’s parents, Robert and Lois Friedman; Ernest Trova’s son, Tino Trova; Mary Ann and Andy Srenco; Mary Strauss; Matt Strauss; Sam Foxman; Phillip Slein; Jeff Fort; Darin Slyman; Greg Lukeman; Cabanne Schlafly; Ann and Randy Lipton; Dr. Peter Tuteur; and Jan and Rand Goldstein.

Also there was the 5th Anniversary gala committee led by David Drier, Meredith Holbrook, Jimmy Jamison and Susan Sherman. John Ferring, prez of the board, and Paul Ha, director of the museum, helped kick off the event.