By Howard Pousner
hpousner@ajc.com

The curators may appear to be competing against each other at the High Museum of Art’s second annual Collectors’ Evening on Jan. 28, but it’s the museum that stands to come out the winner.

The dinner benefit at the Twelve Hotel is aimed at building the Midtown museum’s permanent collection. Curators from six High departments will try to “sell” the audience while presenting pieces as potential acquisitions. Guests will then cast their votes, and the High will buy the work — or works — with the most support.

There were enough donations at In last year’s the inaugural Collectors’s Evening to buy four of the pieces presented, including a collection of 20 photographs from Paul Fusco’s “Robert F. Kennedy Funeral Train Rediscovered” portfolio.

The works pitched for acquisition this year include:

• “Lamentation” (1946), a 25-inch-tall limestone sculpture by French-born American artist Robert Laurent.

• “Portrait of Nency Destouches,” an 1829 oil-on-canvas by French painter Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Vinchon.

• An untitled 1946 painting by North Carolina folk artist Minnie Evans.

• “Bright Star (Sirius)” a 2010 creation by New York artist Spencer Finch, 107 inches diameter.

• A 19th-century elephant headdress from Cameroon.

• Vik Muniz’s “Leda and the Swan, after Leonardo da Vinci” (2009), from the Brazilian-born American photographer’s “Pictures of Junk” series.

Benefit

High Museum of Art Collectors’s Evening

6:30 p.m. Jan. 28. Twelve Hotel, Atlantic Station, 361 17th St. N.W. Donation: $500. More information and curator videos about the works: www.high.org/collectorsevening. 404-733-4557.