Lewis Hamilton, Swizz Beatz and Nine Inch Nails Toast Influential Artists

On Tuesday night, as joggers wove down Eastern Parkway toward Prospect Park, art world fixtures stepped out of black cars and filed past blossoming trees into the Brooklyn Museum.

Inside, the institution was hosting the Brooklyn Artists Ball, its largest annual fund-raiser. The evening honored Titus Kaphar, the American painter, whose work is currently in the museum’s exhibition, “Giants: Art From the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys.”

Mr. Kaphar said the night felt “kind of shocking.”

“I didn’t grow up going to museums,” Mr. Kaphar, explained, recalling when he first saw an exhibit of the painter Kehinde Wiley’s work at the Brooklyn Museum when he was a graduate student.

“I’d never considered the possibility that my work would exist in a place like this until I saw that brother do what he was doing. Then I thought maybe, just maybe.”