A benefit exhibition at David Zwirner gallery in New York just pulled in $950,000 for the Ali Forney Center—a nonprofit running a 24-hour drop-in space for queer youth while offering housing, job training, medical care, and education support. The haul nearly tripled the initial $350,000 target.
The shift in strategy made the difference. Previous iterations of "Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center" partnered with Sotheby's auction house and raised $545,000 in 2023 and $373,000 in 2024. This year, curator and art adviser Stephen Truax moved the exhibition to the David Zwirner gallery specifically to have more control over pricing and buyer relationships. That control opened doors: he brought in 37 artists, including heavyweight names like Ross Bleckner, Marlene Dumas, Julie Mehretu, and Wolfgang Tillmans—artists who might not have participated under the auction model.
The structure itself became a teaching moment in how fundraising can work. The gallery waived its typical commission. Most artists donated their work outright; about a third accepted up to 50% of sale proceeds. Of the $1.2 million in total sales, artists took home $250,000. The rest went directly to the Ali Forney Center. Truax called it a "win-win-win"—and the numbers suggest he was right.
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Start Your News DetoxArtist Doron Langberg, who'd contributed to all three iterations of the exhibition, captured what drew people in: "Coming together with other artists to support our queer community gives me a sense of agency and hope in a time of precarity and helplessness." He noted the Ali Forney Center's "life-saving work despite many obstacles."
That work matters. The center serves some of the most vulnerable young people in New York—kids aging out of foster care, those facing family rejection, homeless LGBTQ+ teens. A nearly $1 million injection doesn't solve systemic problems, but it extends the runway. It means more beds, more counselors, more job placements. It means the doors stay open.
The exhibition model is already being replicated. When artists, galleries, and nonprofits align around a shared goal and trust each other enough to step back from standard commission structures, the math changes. The next question is whether other cities and causes will borrow this playbook.
