Gordon Parks Foundation Gala Raises $3 Million, Shatters Auction Record, Celebrates Black Excellence

A Black woman in a pale blue dress and white pumps stands alongside her young niece wearing a white lace dress, white bobby socks, and black mary janes. The woman’s elegant attire is gently subverted by a loose slip strap, drawing the viewer closer and evoking an emotional response to her humanity. This quotidian image of generational familial bonds outside a department store becomes impossible to ignore under the neon sign pointing to the “COLORED ENTRANCE.”

The incongruous image of Joanne Wilson and her niece juxtaposed with the inhumane sign is painfully relevant nearly seven decades after it was shot by Gordon Parks (1912–2006) for a Life Magazine photo essay documenting the Thornton family under segregation in Alabama. Parks’ essay opened an urgent national conversation about the Jim Crow South, creating stunning full color portraits that stood out among the mostly black and white imagery from protests and demonstrations exposing widespread racism at the time. By removing the blatant political context of the nascent Civil Rights Movement, Parks fosters empathy with his genuinely revolutionary focus on the everyday lives of Black people.

Department Store, Mobile, Alabama (1956) fetched $140,00 during a live auction led by Kimberly Pirtle of Sotheby’s Collectors Group last night at the glamorous Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner and Auction, celebrating the arts and social justice. The seminal image was the top lot, surpassing the $114,300 sale of Segregation Story (1956) at Phillips New York in 2024, which exceeded the high end of the estimate ($70,000-$90,000). The A-list event raised a record $3 million for the foundation, which permanently preserves the work of the trailblazing photographer, composer, author, poet, and filmmaker, who rose to prominence in U.S. documentary photojournalism between the 1940s and the 1970s.

On the heels of the 2025 Met Gala, amplified by the success of Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through October 26, the enduring legacy of Black dandyism was on display last night at Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan. The Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Dinner and Auction honored: pioneering Black fashion model and activist Bethann Hardison; master of conceptual post-Black art, Rashid Johnson; influential editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour; and ambassador, congressman, mayor, and civil rights leader, Andrew J. Young.

“I’m sometimes thinking to myself, how long can I continue to do the things I do. … people say to me, ‘when are you going to retire? That’s not a word I know very well, because it always seems like there is something else I want to do, something else that has to be done. And as Ms. Wintour said earlier, we do things, but there’s still so much more to be done when you’re that person. Everyone’s not meant to do it, but for those who are meant to do it, you know the Trojan horse, we need a lot of people to pull that Trojan Horse. Oftentimes, it’s more about the pullers than the person who’s on the horse. And I really feel that way, and I live a lot of times between bravery and fear,” said Hardison. “Sometimes you have to think, ‘how long can you hold off from not saying anything to someone?’, because you know you’re going to really shake something up when you do it. And the bravery steps up. And I grab hold of bravery. It takes bravery to do a lot of things right now. We have to be extremely brave. Extremely brave.”

Besides poignant speeches from the honorees and special guests, Rev. Ernest F. Ledbetter, Jr. and Rev. Dr. Ernest F. Ledbetter III, the son and grandson of Rev. E.F. Ledbetter, gala attendees, including celebrities, philanthropists, collectors, and art and fashion world luminaries, were treated to a performance by singer-songwriter Andra Day. The event also feted the 2025 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellows, Derek Fordjour, Scheherazade Tillet, and Salamishah Tillet.

This year’s awards dinner and auction were hosted by co-chairs: Alicia Keys and Kasseem Dean; Tonya and Spike Lee; Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor; Anderson Cooper; Sarah Arison; Kathryn and Kenneth Chenault; Michi Jigarjian; Judy and Leonard Lauder; Carol Sutton Lewis and William M. Lewis, Jr.; Crystal McCrary and
Raymond McGuire; Gail and Jeff Yabuki; Alex Soros and Huma Abedin; and Clara Wu Tsai. Ceelbrity guests icnluded Tory Burch, Dapper Dan, Malcolm Jenkins, Misty Copeland, Gayle King, Ari Melber, Leslie Odom, Jr., Marcus Samuelsson, Deborah Roberts, Annie Leibovitz, Jay Ellis, Prabal Gurung, Breanna Stewart, Michael Stipe, and Mickalene Thomas.