Parties: Eat your art out, darling

Of course they did it for the art, but the £13.5m expansion of the Whitechapel Gallery has made it an ideal venue for a party, too. Art-world movers and shakers did what they do best at last week's opening night, snaking up and down and in and out of the labyrinth of white-washed studios and spaces created from knocking through into a disused library next door.

Serious types including the Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota and the National Portrait Gallery director Sandy Nairne retreated to the inner sanctum of the British Council room, where Hockneys, Hirsts and early Freuds owned by the Council are on display, thanks to a campaign by the artist Michael Craig-Martin, who was roundly cheered for persuading the Council to bring its collection out of storage.

The composer Michael Nyman and his young companion Florence Mackenzie soon found a table heaving with delicious platters of food – which (whisper it) some thought more beautiful than the art on the walls – and remained stationed there, tucking into kebab sticks laden with seafood and artichoke hearts.

On the stairs, Alex James and his wife held court – joined briefly by burlesque queen Immodesty Blaize – while others hollered from the top of the stairs at their friends in the throng below. After a quick tour, the designer Henry Holland left early, feeling ill from the night before. "I don't want to make an artwork of my own on the floor," he murmured.

Up on the roof overlooking the east London skyline, serious partyers stayed on to boogie to a set by the DJ Dan Lywood, helped by a well-stocked bar of invigorating Tovaritch vodka cocktails and chilled prosecco. If we're going to close down our libraries, we might as well put them to good use.