For $150, You Can Collect Photographs by Tyler Mitchell, Jack Pierson, and Others and Support One of the Hardest-Hit Hospitals in Queens

If you’re finding it harder to spend money with all the despair
in the world right now, a new fund-raiser is encouraging  art
collectors to buy works that will simultaneously aid relief
efforts.

The initiative, titled “Pictures for Elmhurst,” launched today to sell
$150 prints by 96 New York-based photographers, including Jack
Pierson, Tyler Mitchell, Peter Sutherland, Farah Al Qasimi, and
others, with 95 percent of the proceeds going to Elmhurst Hospital
in Queens. The hospital will use the funds from the sale,
which runs through April 20, to buy ventilators, masks, surgical
scrubs, goggles, and other equipment.

The project was inspired by a similar fund-raiser in hard-hit
Bergamo, Italy, which raised a stunning €727,600 (about
$796,000) to benefit the Pope Giovanni XXIII Hospital.

One of the founders of “Pictures for Elmhurst,” Samantha
Casolari, is from Italy and called on her friends in the industry
to chip in and bring the project stateside. So far, she says the
“response has been overwhelming.” In just its first four hours, the
project has raised $90,000.

Located in the heart of Queens, Elmhurst is a safety-net
hospital that serves mainly low-income patients, many of whom do
not have a primary care physician, and has now designated 95
percent of its facility to COVID-19 cases.

The photographs, all printed by Brooklyn-based Griffin Editions,
will be shipped once non-essential businesses reopen.

See some of the available images, below.

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Mitchell, Jack Pierson, and Others and Support One of the
Hardest-Hit Hospitals in Queens appeared first on artnet
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