Charity Cases

The (Red) Auction Top Lots Sold

1. Damien Hirst, Where There's a Will There’s a Way (2007)

2. Jeff Koons, Balloon Rabbit Wall Relief (RED) (2008)


3. Banksy, (Defaced Hirst), Keep It Spotless (2008)


4. Richard Prince, Untitled (The Velvets) (2007)


5. Takashi Murakami, Red Flower Ball (3-D) (2007)


6. Andreas Gursky, Pyongyang IV (2007)

Christopher Wool Gregory Crewdson Damien Hirst Chuck Close Keith Tyson Katy Grannan Cindy Sherman Sterling Ruby

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Everybody wants to hold a benefit art auction, or attend one, and the calendar is filling up with more and more galas. The proliferation of events means more money in nonprofit coffers and lots of opportunities for collectors—but plenty of headaches, too.

Activist and aging rock star Bono, wearing a black military-style jacket and sunglasses, stood at the front of the Sotheby’s salesroom revving up the crowd like a preacher at a tent revival. Minutes before the start of the February 14 (Red) Auction, he was cajoling the assembled guests to bid generously to support aids relief in Africa. Backed not only by the music legend but also by Sotheby’s, the artist Damien Hirst and the dealer Larry Gagosian, this was no ordinary benefit sale. And, as you might expect, given the sponsors, the lots offered were far from ordinary as well, with pieces by such coveted names as the graffiti artist Banksy and the Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson. “We’re not asking you to buy charity art, art from the remainder bin,” Bono told the group of more than 700 dealers, collectors and such red-carpet swells as the domestic maven Martha Stewart, the rap mogul Russell Simmons and Queen Noor of Jordan.

The (Red) sale raked in $42.6 million, an all-time high in the annals of charity art auctions, and in the process set 17 artist auction records, including ones for Banksy and Tyson and the British painter Howard Hodgkin. Other nonprofits and museums have also recently partnered with auctioneers to reap millions. Last fall, for example, Phillips de Pury & Co. in New York hosted the New Museum for Contemporary Art’s charity auction, raising $8.2 million. This spring, the 14 highest-profile art-related benefits in New York alone brought in almost $50 million.

Benefit art auctions surged in popularity in the 1980s only to fall into a decline—alongside the contemporary art market— in the 1990s. Over the past decade, as the economy has expanded rapidly, these events have returned with a vengeance, attracting black-tie patrons eager for merry, booze-fueled evenings coupled with a chance to part publicly with thousands or more on art. For collectors who spend their days on the trading floor or in corporate cubicles, part of the appeal is the schmoozing with like-minded connoisseurs, as well as with marquee artists such as Chuck Close, John Baldessari and the latest Whitney Biennial whiz kid, who receive freebie tickets as thank-yous for donating works to sell.

Everyone likes doing good, but the flood of charity art auctions also presents an unprecedented opportunity to collectors willing to sift for treasures in the huge and hugely varied agglomeration of lots on offer—everything from a small scale sculpture by a current critical darling to a leftover large edition lithograph plucked from some studio floor. The sizzling contemporary-art market, and a demand for top artists that far outpaces their output, have helped produce healthy profits for big-ticket events that give collectors a way to support an institution and get an important artwork in return. “Benefits have mutated from a place where people went bargain hunting to a place where people are comfortable overspending,” says the New York art adviser Allan Schwartzman.

Overspending is encouraged by the current tax laws, which allow a buyer to deduct the difference between the suggested retail price and the hammer price. The auctioneers for these events usually don’t charge the normal 25 percent buyer’s commission or the state sales tax, either. “I’ve found in charity auctions that people bid more aggressively, sometimes three or four bids more than they usually would,” says Aileen Agopian, Phillips’s director of contemporary art.

The idea that one might happen upon a find adds to the allure. “Much of the material is new and comes directly out of the artist’s studio,” says Paul Schimmel, the chief curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, who spearheads MOCA’s biannual auction, the 2008 edition of which, in May, raised $1.9 million at Phillips. “These are not things that have circulated.”

Influential event organizers like Schimmel can call in favors and land prime material for the block. During a ski trip this spring with his buddy the Trinidad-based painter Peter Doig, Schimmel mentioned the upcoming moca benefit. Doig, whose auction record is $11.3 million, volunteered a pastel-hued nautical oil drawing, Cyril’s Bay, 2008, estimated at $40,000. Dallas Price-Van Breda, the spritely blonde president of MOCA’s board of trustees, sat in the front row at the sale, raising her paddle until the Doig was hers for $70,000.