On Saturday, October 3, the Grand Hall of the San Francisco Ferry Building filled with black tie, bass lines, and a balance sheet most museums would frame. The Museum of the African Diaspora’s Afropolitan Ball, the institution’s signature annual fundraiser, raised over $1 million in a single evening for MoAD’s exhibitions, education programs, and the artists at the center of both.
The night carried a first. MoAD presented its inaugural Vanguard Award to Dewey Crumpler, the Oakland-based painter, muralist, and educator whose work has shaped Bay Area art for more than fifty years. The award recognizes an artist whose vision, creative practice, and cultural leadership have advanced contemporary art and widened the global conversation around the African Diaspora. Co-chairs Charles and Cheryl Ward led the evening, with DJ Jihaari, an all-vinyl DJ from Oakland, setting the tempo.
The artist the award was built for
Crumpler, born in Arkansas in 1949 and raised in San Francisco’s Hunters Point neighborhood, began his practice as a city muralist, studying in Mexico City under Pablo Esteban O’Higgins and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He went on to serve as an Associate Professor of Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, where his students included Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Roberts. His work sits in the permanent collections of the Oakland Museum of California and the California African American Museum, and digital images of his murals appeared in Tate Modern’s 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation.
The timing was deliberate. On September 30, days before the ball, MoAD opened Dewey Crumpler: Sonic Lineages, curated by Key Jo Lee and on view through May 30, 2027, his first major solo museum presentation in nearly two decades. Monetta White, MoAD’s Executive Director and CEO, wrote afterward that hearing Crumpler reflect on dreaming of a place like MoAD as a 16-year-old artist was “something I will carry with me.”
A week that ended at the Ferry Building
The ball closed the third annual Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week, which ran September 30 through October 4 across San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. By MoAD’s count, this was the largest Nexus yet: 90 Black artists and 190 activations, from exhibitions and open studios to talks, screenings, and performances. White has described MoAD’s role in the week in modest terms. “We open a door,” she told Essence, “and what Nexus visitors discover on the other side is what is most important.” Corporate sponsors for the evening included Salesforce, Kaiser Permanente, and the Golden State Warriors.
Founded in 2005, MoAD remains one of the few museums in the country devoted to contemporary art of the African Diaspora, with a mission to celebrate Black cultures and spark learning through a global lens. A seven-figure night at the Ferry Building suggests its region has decided that mission is infrastructure, not ornament.
San Francisco just made a strong one. The teenager in Hunters Point waited six decades for his museum. On Saturday night, it paid him back in full.
The Social Register’s event directory tracks the season’s galas, benefits, and society evenings. Plan your next evening there.
