Artists Mobilize Benefit Auction for Jamaica and Los Angeles During L.A. Art Week
CORE and TBA21 are launching a two-city framed relief auction in Hollywood, with 100 percent of proceeds supporting long-term recovery efforts tied to hurricane and wildfire devastation.
A major benefit auction timed to L.A. Art Week is channeling art market attention toward climate recovery in Jamaica and Los Angeles. On February 26, Community Organized Relief Effort (CORE) and TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary are launching "Get Up Stand Up: Artists for Jamaica and Los Angeles," with an in-person Hollywood sale led by Simon de Pury followed by a two-week online auction phase. Organizers have stated that 100 percent of proceeds will support CORE’s long-term recovery programs.
The roster signals both curatorial intent and market reach. Reported participating artists include Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Hurvin Anderson, Alvaro Barrington, Nari Ward, Ernesto Neto, Tavares Strachan, and Alberta Whittle, among others. Many of these names are not random add-ons for fundraising optics. They represent practices with established relationships to diasporic histories, social memory, and environmental vulnerability, making the event’s framing more coherent than standard emergency-benefit programming.
What distinguishes this auction is not celebrity density, it is the clarity of its funding structure and the insistence that cultural capital should convert directly into recovery capital.
The event also sits inside a larger shift in how art institutions and market actors respond to climate-linked catastrophe. In previous cycles, post-disaster support often relied on one-off symbolic gestures, charity editions, social posts, or loosely coordinated fundraising evenings. Here, the structure appears more deliberate: public-facing event, auction infrastructure, cross-regional framing, and explicit commitment to long-horizon recovery rather than immediate but short-lived relief visibility.
That long-horizon emphasis matters. Disaster philanthropy frequently peaks during media intensity and then collapses once attention moves. By anchoring support in a programmatic model and connecting an island nation and a global city under shared climate pressure, organizers are pushing against the idea that these are isolated tragedies. Jamaica and Los Angeles are geographically different, but both have become case studies in disproportionate exposure to climate risk, infrastructural strain, and uneven access to recovery resources.
The host committee, according to coverage of the event, includes high-profile cultural and entertainment names along with major gallery support. That ecosystem can generate substantial bidding energy, but it also creates a test for credibility. For an initiative like this to matter beyond one cycle, it must sustain transparency around disbursement, program outcomes, and community-level impact after the auction headlines fade.
From an art-world governance perspective, this initiative is notable because it treats fundraising as cultural programming rather than emergency add-on. It asks whether collectors, galleries, artists, and institutions are willing to convert visibility into durable material support. In practical terms, the model is replicable: tight curatorial list, direct recovery partner, clear percentage commitments, and hybrid live-digital auction design.
The broader implication is straightforward. Climate disruption is no longer an external issue that occasionally intersects with culture. It is now embedded in the operating conditions of the art world itself, from shipping and insurance to venue resilience and community displacement. Benefit auctions alone are not structural solutions, but this one suggests a more serious baseline: if the art market can move quickly for premieres, fairs, and sales weeks, it can move quickly for recovery systems too.
Bidding for "Get Up Stand Up: Artists for Jamaica and Los Angeles" begins the evening of February 26 following the Hollywood launch, with online bidding continuing for two weeks.