A Record-Breaking $1.2 Million Night

What: MFAH Latin American Experience Gala & Auction.

Where: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Caroline Wiess Law Building.

Who: Chairs and big-ticket underwriters Linda and George Kelly; fellow underwriters and collectors Leslie and Brad Bucher and Sara and Bill Morgan; blue-chip contemporary acquirers Jereann Chaney with Norman Ewart, Mary and Bernie Arocha, Penelope and Lester Marks, Tinta and Pablo Henning, Cecilia and Luis Campos; Houston’s power Latin American gallerist Maria Ines Sicardi and partners Allison and David Ayers; Joanna and Rusty Wortham; esteemed MFAH Latin American curator Mari Carmen Ramirez; MFAH director Gary Tinterow; and out-of-towners New York gallerist Cecilia de Torres and mega Miami collector Tanya Brillembourg, whose extraordinary trove of Latin American art was on view at the MFAH in 2013.

PC Moment: The banner evening of the sixth biennial Latin American Experience Weekend at the MFAH drew more than 400 worldwide collectors, gallerists, artists and aficionados to Houston, traveling from Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The hallmark of the $1.2 million night was a record-breaking live auction conducted by Sotheby’s witty James Niven. A memorable moment was when Lot 20 went on the auction block, a conceptual porcelain sculpture by Regina Silveira, won by Brad Bucher who promptly gifted it to the MFAH.