Benefit Evening 2015

Thursday 8 October 2015, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and de Appel arts centre hosted their annual Benefit evening & auction at Undercurrent, overseeing the IJ river in Amsterdam.

This Benefit evening – established to raise private funding for future exhibitions, public programs and publications – signalized the anniversaries of both institutions: twenty-five years of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art and forty years of de Appel arts centre. Over 170 guests – collectors, art professionals, artists, and other benefactors – joined to support both institutions.

Some of the highlights of the evening, moderated by Lucas de Man, included a keynote lecture by conceptual artist Ahmet Öğüt: “Artifact (hereafter referred to as the work of art)” and an auction chaired by Christie’s Amsterdam again. The auction included works generously donated by artists Remco Torenbosch, Ni Haifeng, Rossella Biscotti, Femke Herregraven, Narcisse Tordoir, Willem de Rooij, Haegue Yang, Rory Pilgrim, and Michael Portnoy.

For the first time bidders were also given the opportunity to ‘adopt’ certain items, like a publication, or a participant of the Curatorial Programme of de Appel arts centre. The guests were seated at dinner tables commissioned especially for the Benefit evening to David Jablonoswki, Vanessa Disler, and Kelly Schacht.

This year, Witte de With and de Appel joined forces with the online auction house Paddle8. This was the first Benefit auction for Paddle8 in The Netherlands.