“I know you’re not supposed to talk,” Ms. Stark said. “But if you want a vodka at any point, just blink.”

No one blinked.

Earlier, Eli Broad, the museum’s major benefactor said, “Look, I know other institutions don’t do things the way we do,” referring to artist-commissioned galas it has mounted in recent years, events that have included the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli’s campy reimagining of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe as a backdrop for a slightly loco performance by Lady Gaga. “But people should do it more.”

This time the impresario charged with staging the fall benefit for an institution chartered as “an artists’ museum” — one revitalized by a multimillion-dollar infusion of funds from Mr. Broad; a replacement director; a raft of newly minted trustees and a sense among locals that the often-echoed hype about Los Angeles being the cultural capital of the 21st century may at last be justified — was an even less obvious choice.

The museum invited Ms. Abramovic, a performance-art phenomenon and a woman whose provocative works have made her, somewhat unexpectedly at 64, a darling of the increasingly incestuous worlds of fashion, society and art, to conjure up some sorcery.

Her recipe for party magic took the form of human centerpieces made up of live models with heads emerging through holes cut into the tables or else lying atop them, in imitation of her famous artwork “Nude With Skeleton”; Svetlana Spajic, a Serbian throat singer; and cakes created by Raphael Castoriano as life-size replicas of Ms. Abramovic’s naked body and also that of Deborah Harry.