Bun B drops in on MFAH’s Grand Gala Ball
Social media loves to throw around the hashtag #iconic, which by definition is a person or thing widely admired for having great influence or significance.
Space City has no shortage of either. Which is why Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Grand Gala Ball chose to celebrate Icons with a capital “I” as its theme on Friday evening. The best way to ensure a party becomes instantly #iconic? Sneak in a surprise performance.
Houston icon Bernard James Freeman, aka Bun B, gave a mini-concert during MFAH’s annual black-tie benefit. Chairs Nicole and Evan Katz raised more than $2 million that night. Most of the 490 guests sang along to hit single “Big Pimpin,” released in April 2000 by Jay-Z with a guest appearance by UGK — the 1980s hip-hop duo featuring Chad “Pimp C” Butler and Bun B was another Houston icon.
A quickie stage cameo wasn’t the only trick up Bun B’s sleeve. These days, the rapper and Rice University guest lecturer is most famous for his Trill Burgers. So he returned to his pop-up roots to bring his popular smashburgers to MFAH as a late-night treat. “Good Morning America” named Trill Burgers the Best Burger in America in 2022. Together with partners Andy Nguyen and Nick Scurfield, Bun B opened a brick-and-mortar Trill Burger location in Montrose earlier this year.
Rumors of Bun B’s surprise concert rippled threw the crowd early on. The performance was all but confirmed when attendees spotted him and wife Angela “Queenie” Wells posing in the reception’s black-andwhite photo booth. The couple also previously attended Her Majesty Queen Sofía of Spain’s 2023 Sophia Awards for Excellence at MFAH last spring.
Additional Houston icons in attendance included Lynn Wyatt and Astros owners Jim and Whitney Crane. Sadly, there was no World Series Championship trophy to pose with this year, though a number of iconic Texas-centric films such as “Giant” and “Urban Cowboy” streamed via projector throughout dinner.
A number of iconic works hung on the walls of Cullinan Hall inside MFAH’s Caroline Wiess Law Building, too: Oliverio Toscani’s “Double Portraits of Andy Warhol” (1974); Andy Warhol’s “Self Portrait in Drag (regular wig)" (1981), “Self Portrait in Drag (blond wig)" (1981), “Caroline” (1976); “Self Portrait in Drag (black wig)" (1981), and “Self Portrait in Drag (blond curly wig)" (1981); and Pablo Picasso’s “Woman With Outstretched Arms Standing Woman” (1961).
Get a taste of icon-inthe-making Kehinde Wiley’s latest exhibition, “An Archaeology of Silence,” now on view at MFAH through January 2024.