Houston’s Coolest Art Party Takes On a New Twist — The CAMH Continues to Colorfully Innovate

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s gala is one of the most incandescent evenings of any Bayou City year — a high-voltage soirée for the cool collector set with a celebrated art auction. This year’s benefit, concisely rebranded as CAMH Party, was all that and more, marking a fresh chapter in the museum’s annals as the first fundraiser under the co-directorship of chief curator Ryan N. Dennis and COO Melissa McDonnell Luján.

Novel also was the absence of gala chairs. In their place, a hard-working host committee stepped up, underwriting tables and acquiring tickets for the cause.

A throng of more than 200 people — museum trustees and other staunch patron types, gallerists and A-listers, as in artists — turned out to support one of America’s oldest contemporary art institutions, one that at 76 years old remains cutting edge, nimble and intensely relevant. As proof, see the now-on-view mid-career survey of Tomashi Jackson, whose painting, printmaking and installation work amounts to a lesson in American history.

This fête, visually curated in the CAMH’s sleek parallelogram by The Events Company, unfolded in five acts: cocktails fueled by LALO Tequila and art viewing; the Swift + Company-catered seated dinner with diners having a choice of white-corn ravioli, chicken scallopini, or herb-crusted salmon; a hotly contested live auction bidding conducted by Sotheby’s Charlie Caulkins; more cocktails paired with silent-auction action; and a late-night after-party spun by Grammy-garnering DJ Spinderella.

The evening was a bridge from CAMH’s notable past (as the first museum to show works by photographer Cindy Sherman, 1980; painter Julian Schnabel, 1976; and, more recently, the Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Garrett Bradley, 2019) to its role today as a bastion of the important and avant-garde.

Fittingly, photography by Sherman and Bradley was included in the live auction.

PC Seen: Sissy and Denny Kempner; Penelope and Lester Marks; Poppi Massey, the high bidder on a coveted Vincent Valdez Amnesia drawing, with daughter Phoebe Massey Cholnoky; board chair Ruth Dreessen; board prez Elisa Stude Pye with husband Cris Pye; Johanne and Joe Gatto; CAMH curators Patricia Restrepo and Rebecca Matalon with gallerist husband Adam Marnie; Alecia Harris; Mara and Erick Calderon; Houston Arts Alliance’s Taylor Jackson and Grace Zuñiga; Stephanie and Jackson Smith; Katherine and Justin Smith; gallerists Heidi Vaughan, Laura Rathe with artist Gil Bruvel, Josh Pazda with wife/MFAH retail maven Chris Goins, Kerry Inman with husband Denby Auble, McClain Gallery’s Sharon Graham and Hélène Schlumberger, Tom Raith of Seven Sisters with gallery artist Daniel Rios-Rodriguez, and Tureen’s Cody Fitzsimmons and Chris Scott in from Dallas; Kristen and Drew Perrin; Jessica Phifer; Drew Baird; art advisers Moriah Alise and Katharine Barthelme Frank with husband Shane Frank; Drs. Annette and Anthony Brissett; Louise Jamail; Heidi and David Gerger; Danielle O’Bannon and Jon Redwine; artist Angelbert Metoyer with fiancée Sarah Mangum; Randy Palmer; Darryl Sharpton; Mitra Murthy and Alex Lyos; Unique James; Houston’s new director of public art, Alton DuLaney; Glasstire’s Brandon Zech; and auction headliners including Jamal Cyrus, Robert Pruitt, Lovie Olivia, Janavi Mahimtura Folmsbee, Erika Alonso, and Emily Peacock.