As a power couple of the arts, superproducer Kasseem Daoud Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, and 17-time Grammy winner Alicia Keys have been dedicated to their Dean Collection and to promoting the Gordon Parks Foundation and its springtime gala for 15 years. And for those who attended the organization’s 20th celebration of its annual awards ceremony, banquet and auction, it was the prime opportunity to chat candidly with Swizz at the bar.
While signing at least one autograph for a bow-tied attendee, Swizz, one of the evening’s co-chairs, spoke freely about his collection of DJ Kool Herc memorabilia, his parents meeting each other at Herc’s renowned Sedgwick Avenue rec room, and missing the Harlem photoshoot of Gordon Parks’s famous “Great Day in Hip Hop” photograph back in 1998.
His wife, Keys, understood why the photoshoot was a hard one to miss. “I think often of Gordon [Parks] as a renaissance man, a person who had no limits, no boundaries, no ceilings, no starts, no stops—just endless beginnings,” she said from the podium at the event, held at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City. “That is what tonight’s all about!”
As guests took their assigned seats after the cocktail hour, Chance the Rapper kicked off the festivities alongside the Anthony Morgan Inspirational Choir of Harlem, performing “I Was a Rock.” A tribute to Muhammad Ali, previously performed at the 2016 ESPY Awards, it felt apropos amid the banner backdrop of Parks’s 1966 portrait of the sweat-drenched champ.
The Foundation celebrated Chance the Rapper and the night’s other honorees: Elizabeth Alexander, John Legend, Henry Taylor and Lonnie Ali, on a sweltering 92-degree New York City night, over curated dishes prepared by chef Marcus Samuelsson.
Said Legend during his acceptance speech (after some pre-recorded praise from Pharrell Williams), “[Toni Morrison spoke] of how dangerous artists are. She said every dictator gets rid of the artists first. They burn the books, they execute the artists, then they get on with whatever else they’re interested in. Why? Because art might do something.”
He continued, “Art is dangerous to the evil forces of hate, bigotry and fear-mongering. Gordon Parks knew that. And we all need to know it, now more than ever.”
With a mission to keep art thriving, the evening’s auctioneer, Kimberly Pirtle, founder of Gabriel Advisory Group, charmingly led the sale of Gordon Parks prints to the highest bidder, helping raise $1.2 million for the foundation. After a few aborted bids, Chance the Rapper walked away with the celebrated 1956 photo, At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama.
Though previous galas featured afterparty deejaying by the likes of D-Nice and Swizz Beatz, the entertainment at this year’s event remained squarely on the stage. The foundation’s first music fellow, pianist Jason Moran, performed an original Ali-inspired composition entitled “Rhythm of the Ring.” Legend even sang a few bars of his Oscar-winning Best Original Song “Glory,” the lyrical centerpiece of director Ava DuVernay’s 2014 cinematic masterpiece, Selma.