The Studio Museum in Harlem’s annual gala is one of the most glamorous events of the year – and one of the city’s biggest fund-raisers. Monday’s event brought in $1.5 million for the museum.

The gowns (and furs) and the whimsical food – including mini candy apples for dessert – were a small part of the success story. The benefit is one of the most memorable nights of the year due to the breadth of accomplishment among its attendees.

“The Studio Museum gala has become a show of the immense diversity and success and talents of the black professional world in and around New York,” said board member Gordon Davis.

Indeed, there were moguls, authors, and artists to spot – including the ubiquitous Reverend Al Sharpton. “You’ve got some of the biggest movers and shakers of black New York coming together for a great cause,” he said.

Filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife Tonya Lewis Lee – an honorary chairwoman – shared a table with Ms. Lee’s “Gotham Diaries” co-author, Crystal Anthony. They ate their ginger-roasted vegetables with Deborah Roberts and Al Roker, as well as the charming real estate agent Spencer Means. “It’s a collection of old friends and old black money – just kidding,” Mr. Means said.

The Studio Museum in Harlem, founded in 1968, focuses on contemporary work by artists of African descent. A planned expansion of its building on 125th Street will allow for a cafe, auditorium, and 3,000 square feet of additional gallery space.

The heightened status of the museum and the event is relatively recent, and owes a degree of thanks to the arrival of Lowery Stokes Sims from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Thelma Golden from the Whitney – the museum’s executive director and deputy director, respectively.

“They put the museum on the map of New York cultural institutions,” said one of this year’s gala chairwomen, Carol Sutton Lewis. Sure enough proof was the presence of the New York art world: The director of the Museum of Modern Art, Glenn Lowry; the director at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Adam Weinberg; the new president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Emily Rafferty; the president of the Art Dealers Association of America, Richard Solomon; and art dealers Angela Westwater and Jeanne Rohatyn.

The museum’s uptown neighbors, such as the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger; the president of the Apollo Theater Foundation, Jonelle Procope; and the editor of the Amsterdam News, Elinor Tatum, also came out to support the museum.

Members of the chief executive club included Richard Parsons of Time Warner; Warner Music Group’s Lyor Cohen; and Mr. Cohen’s successor at Island Def Jam, Antonio “L.A.” Reid, who is credited with signing Sean Combs to Arista Records.

Ms. Lewis, who worked on the gala with Joyce Haupt and the chairman of the museum, Raymond McGuire, credited past gala chairwomen Kathryn Chenault and Susan Fales-Hill with creating the buzz about the party.

The event has become a meeting place for black professionals from around the country. Out-of-towners included the founder of BET, Robert Johnson, of Washington, D.C.; a Los Angeles-based film producer, Debra Martin Chase; and from Chicago, the publisher of Ebony and Jet, Linda Johnson Rice, and Mellody Hobson of Ariel Capital Management.

Rusty O’Kelley, a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners, gave pre-and post-gala parties at his apartment nearby, which drew the former president of Spelman College, Johnetta Cole, Henry Finder of The New Yorker, and Princeton professor K. Anthony Appiah.