TNR‘s Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier’s ears must have been burning up last night. Well before he arrived to The Phillips Collection to give a talk on a John Constable oil painting, colleagues gabbed about what a character he is – a few mentioned, for example, his penchant for blasting music at the office. One day it’s Rihanna, the next it’s opera.

Leon doesn’t disappoint. He shows up and people magnetically gravitate toward him. Or was it his hair? He has a spectacular head of shoulder-length, silky, white-gold fluff that makes him a stand-out in any crowd, but especially this well-coiffed, stylish mix.

“I don’t want that on WikiLeaks,” he deadpanned after I snapped his picture.

Later during the talk: “It’s very hard to peel back the familiarity of the work,” he tells a rapt audience stuck on his every word. “It’s a spiritual exercise. When you can do it, great things happen.”

The talk was part of TNR’s co-hosted After 5 dim sum party at The Phillips Collection. Chinatown’s Ping Pong catered the delectable cuisine with shrimp toast among its offerings. Also there to give a talk was the magazine’s Art Critic Jed Perl.

Perl, in from Manhattan, in a tailored brown corduroy blazer and skinny pants, is no slouch alongside Wieseltier. He’s thankfully game to dissect The Devil Wears Prada. He wrote for Vogue in the 80s and reminisced with FishbowlDC about what it was like to be Anna Wintour‘s Art Editor. “She was easy to work with,” he said, explaining she could be shy, not snobby. Of Meryl Streep’s character in the movie, he says, “She doesn’t just play icy bitch. It’s more complex than that.” And so is Wintour. He said she understood him perfectly, is “incredibly smart” and knew his ideal place within the publication. He surmised, “I think she gets a bum rap because she’s a woman. I have a deep respect for her.”

Find out who else attended the party after the jump…

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today TNR.com Editor Greg Veis announces two additions to its web team: Barron YoungSmith and Seyward Darby (pictured above) have been named deputy editors. Both are former reporter-researchers at the magazine.

Chloë Schama (below right) has replaced Darby as Assistant Managing Editor. Schama is a former Assistant Literary Editor at the magazine. She has an M.Phil. in English from Cambridge and graduated from Harvard. Schama is the author of Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of a Marriage, a Trial, and a Self-Made Woman (Walker Books 2010).

Laura Bennett (below left) has been named Assistant Literary Editor. She graduated from Yale where she was editor-in-chief of the The Yale Herald and the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship.

TNR also introduced its 2010-2011 class of reporter-researchers. Find out who they are and see where they might go. We have the list as well as noteworthy alumni after the jump…

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.