Cover of brochure

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was lucky enough to attend the (RED) Auction at Sotheby’s in NYC, which was a collection of wonderfully curated design pieces (thanks to Jony Ive and Marc Dawson).

I have always wanted to attend an art auction, especially after reading “The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art,” which is an in depth look at how the auction world works (and one I highly recommend reading).

The amazing thing about this event was that all proceeds--and there were plenty--benefitted The Global Fund and Bono’s AIDS foundation. In addition to the money earned during the auction, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation matched every last dollar, making for a grand total of approximately $26M to help those in Africa. I also did not know that Apple is the single largest corporate donor to the (RED) Foundation, which made me feel good about buying their products.

Bono spoke at the beginning of the evening, and I couldn’t have been more impressed with his elegance in knowing how to engage a crowd (totally different than something you’d see at a U2 concert); using not only his broad knowledge base, but his passion and humor, to get folks to pull out their wallet.

One of the items that was of particular interest to me was the specially designed Leica M camera (see below), which went for $1.8M to an anonymous bidder.