On Tuesday evening, the art world's biggest names gathered in Tribeca for a sold out 500 seat gala to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. RHMF was founded in the 1990s to honor the legacy of the art collectors Susan and Michael Hort’s arts-engaged daughter Rema, who died from stomach cancer at age 30.

RHMF’s dual flagship programs are the annual Emerging Artist Grant, which welcomes artists into a lifelong support network starting with an unrestricted $10,000 grant, and the rolling-issuance Quality of Life Cancer Grant, which funds cancer patients’ abilities to spend time with loved ones during treatment—a medically important component of care that is too-often overlooked in cancer philanthropy. The gala honored 2007 Emerging Artist Grant alum Mickalene Thomas; art dealer and breast cancer survivor Marianne Boesky–a dual honoree with the acclaimed oncologist Dr. Elisa Port, who led Boesky’s treatment; and Rema’s widower Billy Mann, a co-founder of the RHMF, who with his second wife and children has lovingly upheld Rema’s legacy.

Gallery sponsors included David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, Marianne Boesky, James Cohan, Anton Kern, Canada, Gladstone, David Kordansky, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Petzel, Jack Shainman, and LGDR. Also, in attendance were multiple entertainment titans including Kelly Rowland dressed in LaQuan Smith, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jill Kargman, Seth Godin, Teddy Geiger, Stacey Sher, Todd Ellis Kessler, Kerry Brown and Atoosa Rubenstein.

The evening’s program included musical performances by rising-star hip-hop pianist BLKBOK and the operatic tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who was profiled in the New Yorker this month. Joanna Gleason emceed.

In addition to over a million dollars in table sales and onsite donations, fundraising $1,685,900 was a direct-from-artist auction of over 120 works by Marilyn Minter, Sarah Sze, Marlene Dumas, Julie Curtiss, Kehinde Wiley, Nicole Eisenman, Eddie Martinez,Katherine Bernhardt, Katherine Bradford, Sanford Biggers, Dana Schutz, and more.

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[Billy Mann, Renée Elise Goldsberry][Kelly Rowland by Madison Voelkel/BFA.com]

Gena Mann, Jill Kargman

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