At the Guggenheim International Gala on Monday night, Rirkrit Tiravanija was surprised to find himself honored, along with the nine other artists in the new exhibition, theanyspacewhatever. “I don’t read the e-mails, I just show up,” he explained. Tiravanija is perhaps best known for his installations, in which he doles out free vegetable curry in various gallery settings as a way of complicating ideas about gifts and wealth.

On the subject of satirical art under an Obama administration, he produced a twenty dollar bill from his wallet with the phrase “Fears Eats The Soul,” printed on it, a reference to the Rainer Werner Fassbinder film “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.” “Sure, it applies because there’s still a lot of fear,” he said, “but fear is on the run in a way that something else is going to change, and then we’re all going to be out of the job because we have nothing to criticize. Which would be great because I would like to go fishing.”

The lackadaisical mood was complemented by a soundtrack provided by New Mexico-based hippies Brightblack Morning Light. Guitarist Nathan “Naybob” Shineywater and keyboardist Rachel “Raybob” Hughes live in an adobe house in the desert and, in the past, have asked fans to bring crystals to their shows. Their lifestyle at first seemed at odds with the art crowd, but at the auction and dinner, our places were marked with translucent stone-shaped objects. Was the Guggenheim giving out funky paperweights as party favors? During the speeches portion of the dinner, a museum official said they were limited-edition works from the artist Mariko Mori, and that they would be valuable someday. Groovy enough.