Alicia Keys And Swizz Beatz Honored At Gordon Parks Awards
May 24, 2024
Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz received their flowers together while being honored at the Gordon Parks Foundation Awards.
Alicia Keys and her husband Swizz Beatz received their flowers together on Tuesday, May 21, while being honored at the Gordon Parks Foundation Awards.
The celebrity couple was in their hometown New York City this week for The Gordon Parks Foundation’s awards dinner and auction which honored their art and activism alongside Colin Kaepernick, Mickalene Thomas, and Civil Rights luminary Myrlie Evers-Williams. Others who were celebrated include the 2024 Gordon Parks Foundation Art Fellows image maker Larry W. Cook, artist Tonika Lewis Johnson, and author D. Watkins, Vogue reports.
Speaking with the Associated Press, Keys shared how she and her hip-hop producer husband “inspire each other.”
“It’s just natural since the minute we met,” she said of Swizz. “There’s a way that each of us has our own way of creating and just by being inspire each other.”
“I love this man. I love all of his brilliance. And it’s beautiful to have that kind of reciprocity,” Keys added.
The annual star-studded event is aimed at honoring the legacy of the late Gordon Parks, the photographer, composer, author, poet, and film director, who gained prominence as a documentary photojournalist who highlighted civil rights, poverty, and the Black experience from the 1940s through 1970s. Others in attendance included Usher, Spike Lee, Gayle King, Chelsea Clinton, Lena Waithe, Maxwell Osborne, and Park’s daughter, Leslie Parks Bailey who spoke about how the event celebrates her late father through the amplification of Black art.
“It’s [the gala] a memory; it’s about my father who I deeply miss,” Parks Bailey said. “It’s a celebration of Black art and moving forward.”
The night included a soulful performance from the Anthony Morgan Inspirational Choir of Harlem, a special tribute to the late actor Richard Roundtree, a live auction, a surprise performance by Patti Smith, and closing remarks from D-Nice who turned the gala into a disco party.
“It’s the night where Gordon Parks is no longer just an icon of the 20th century, he’s a 21st-century legend,” Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Executive director of the foundation said.
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