PHOTOS: El Museo del Barrio’s 2025 Gala 2025 Honoring Tony Bechara

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Karla Martinez de Salas, Stephanie Suberville, Henry R. Muñoz III and Ana Navarro. Peter Zwolinski/BFA.com

Earlier this month, icons of New York Metropolis’s artwork scene gathered beneath the vaulted ceilings of The Pool in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s functionalist Seagram Constructing on Park Avenue for El Museo del Barrio’s annual fundraising gala. The night, posh however purposeful, was orchestrated by a formidable crew of artwork collectors and philanthropists—Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky, Agnes Gund, Karla Harwich and Yolanda Santos amongst them—and it raised over one million {dollars} to help the East Harlem museum’s programming and preservation efforts. However the true coronary heart of the night time was its tribute to the late artist Tony Bechara, whose extraordinary life and legacy gave the gala its emotional ballast.

“Like so lots of you right here tonight, I held a deep admiration and respect for Tony—his imaginative and prescient, his generosity and his unwavering dedication to El Museo and our neighborhood,” mentioned Harwich, stepping as much as the mic to honor Bechara’s enduring dedication to Latinx artists and the establishment that championed them.

Friends sipped clean Dobel Tequila cocktails as Senator Chuck Schumer and El Museo del Barrio’s government director, Patrick Charpenel, provided up comparable sentiments. The gravity of the proceedings was balanced by a stirring efficiency from Puerto Rican opera soprano Larisa Martínez and a recitation by Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco, the fifth inaugural poet of the US. Sotheby’s presided over a energetic public sale that includes greater than twenty-five works by Latin American and Latinx artists, all consigned by world-class galleries, and an unforgettable set by Leo Gruber & Tren Latino saved spirits buoyant.

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Among the many artists noticed had been Candida Alvarez, Coco Fusco, Claudia Peña-Salinas, Lee Quinones, Ruben Toledo and Jean-Pierre Villafañe, who brushed shoulders with Guggenheim curator Naomi Beckwith, The Studio Museum in Harlem director Thelma Golden, Met curator Carlos Picón, El Museo del Barrio curator Susanna Temkin and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Artwork president Julián Zugazagoitia. Additionally holding courtroom had been figures like philanthropist and woman-about-town Jean Shafiroff, writer Daisy Auger Dominguez, ABT principal dancer Isaac Hernandez, actors Mauricio Martinez and Juana Burga, filmmaker and activist Paola Mendoza and fashions Valentina Ferrer, Hiandra Martinez and Lineisy Montero.

Leo Gruber & Tren Latino Peter Zwolinski/BFA.com

“Tony’s legacy will proceed not simply via what he created on canvas, however via what he constructed for generations to return. We miss him deeply. And we have fun him with immense gratitude and love tonight,” Charpenel mentioned, his phrases echoing feelings shared throughout the room. It was an evening of artwork, reminiscence and well-dressed pleasure—simply the type of gathering Bechara may need beloved.