On Tuesday night, collectors and artists gathered in Tribeca for a gala staged by New York’s Rema Hort Mann Foundation — a philanthropic organization dedicated to funding medical support for cancer patients that has forged deep roots in the city’s cultural sector as a longtime backer of emerging artists.
Guests convened for cocktails at Tribeca 360 on Desbrosses Street to view a selection of works donated by contemporary artists auctioned off later in the night. 120 works in total, including pieces by Dana Schutz, Nicole Eisenman, Julie Curtis and Marilyn Minter, were sold to raise funds for the foundation’s dual initiatives distributing grants to support the sick and artists.
Related Articles
Boasting a roster of 500 guests, the fundraiser, now in its 25th annual edition, saw major figures from the art world including dealers David Zwirner, Jeanne Greenberg Royhatan and Marianne Boesky, one of the night’s honorees.
This year’s edition of the gala, the first to be held since 2020, was a snapshot of the art world’s tightly knit ecosystem.
Sara Friedlander, a Christie’s specialist, handled a live portion of the sale with a mix of levity and crassness. Most of the works in the auction were figurative images by Cristina BanBan, Marlene Dumas and Katherine Berhardt, which were bid on by representatives for dealers like Anton Kern and Timothy Taylor. Works sold for prices between $26,000 and $150,000. New York collectors active in the contemporary art circuit, like Michael and Leslie Weismann and Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, were also among the room’s attendees.
By the night’s end, roughly $2.7 million had been raised through donations and auction sales.
But, running in the background of the night’s high spirits was a more somber tone. In remarks to the room, Billy Mann, a musician and widower of the nonprofit’s namesake Rema Hort Mann, paid delicate tribute to two deaths: his late wife and his brother-in-law Peter Hort, who died at the age of 51 in September. As Mann described the last month as “unspeakably challenging” for the Horts, the room felt like a collective reprieve from the commercial undertones that attend gala events.
Madison Voelkel/BFA.com
Artist Mickalene Thomas took to the gala podium to accept the foundation’s Art and Social Justice Award. She is counted among past recipients for the foundation’s emerging artist grants, alongside lauded figures like Kehinde Wiley and Sara Sze. Her presenter, Julie Crooks, a curator at the Gallery of Ontario, heralded Thomas as a main promoter for artists of color.
“I was a real cross-roads in my own career,” Thomas told the packed room, speaking of the nascent period in which she accepted the grant back in 2007. She described the grant’s recognition as being far more important than the funds she recieved.
“What we forget with what these types of awards do for artists early in their career, it really validates them,” she said. “It was about a moment of saying, we see you.”
Thomas recalled that the funding propelled her career to a new level. At the time, it facilitated a new body of work from which she produced the painting Baby I’m ready now (2007), a monumental canvas featuring a portrait of the artist’s friend Aisha Bell posed on a couch and exuding self-assuredness. Presented first in a co-exhibition with Shinique Smith that year, the work would later end up in the collection of Don and Mera Rubell. Eventually it would go on to be shown in the 2016 traveling showcase of their art holdings “30 Americans” that brought Thomas to new heights.
“You can see those connections. Without the award, no one would have seen Baby I’m ready now,” Thomas said.