Displaying items by tag: project perpetual

Hollywood has had HIV and Darfur, fashion has breast cancer, and music now once again has Live Aid, but the art world – as moneyed as any of them – has never had a charity cause to call its own.

Enter Project Perpetual, who on 9 November auctioned off a specially commissioned sculpture by pop artist Jeff Koons for $4m, benefitting the United Nations Foundation. The piece, based on Picasso’s "La Soupe" and titled "Gazing Ball (Charity)," stands six feet tall and is slung with donated Hermès handbags. The animated Phillips auctioneer Simon de Pury pointed out that Koons had made three of each of the 17 pieces in his "Gazing Ball" series – but that this one was in a unique single edition.

Project Perpetual, a new philanthropy established to raise money for humanitarian causes by collaborating with artists, has enlisted Jeff Koons to create the first in a series of new works that will be used to raise money for the United Nations Foundation.

Mr. Koons, who is the subject of a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art that runs through Oct. 19, and who recently created a “virtual sculpture” for Garage magazine, will create one large sculpture and three to five smaller pieces.