Holiday Gift Guide 2020: The Art of Giving Back
December 7, 2020
Given the challenges we have all faced in 2020, gift-giving can seem extravagant or “nonessential.” This year, master the art of giving by gifting products that benefit the greater good.
From puzzles and throw pillows, to cutlery and coffee table books, our carefully curated holiday gift guide has something for every altruistic art lover on your list!
FOR THE FUN-LOVING PHILANTHROPIST
Rocklen created the furniture company, Trophy Modern, which uses trophies as components of chairs, sofas, and tables.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Retail: $2,800.00 / Member Price: $2,520.00
For those who binged “The Queen’s Gambit”, celebrate with this Ry Rocklin-designed Trophy Modern Chess Set (Basketball), 2014. Also in support of LACMA, the chess pieces are modeled after Rocklin’s trophy sculptures, celebrating the blood, sweat, tears, and triumph of competition.
Hyperallergic is a critical independent arts publication sharing insightful perspectives on contemporary artists.
Hyperallergic in collaboration with Third Drawer Down
Retail: $20.00
There’s nothing puzzling about supporting your favorite arts publications this holiday season. Featuring Frank Stella’s colorful monumentally-scaled painting Firuzabad, 1970, and shaped accordingly, this jazzy 750-piece puzzle is sure to keep the whole family entertained.
Proceeds from the sales support Hyperallergic.
Hyperallergic
Retail: $46.00
Hand-carved and hand-painted, this cute collectible wooden doll makes the perfect stocking stuffer. Capturing the personalities and iconic characteristics of world-famous artists, such as Frida Kahlo, the figurines offer a playful modern take on the Japanese kokeshi doll.
The Skateroom has teamed up with Yoshitomo Nara and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to offer 3 iconic editions of the Japanese artist during a large retrospective.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Retail: $600.00 / Member Price: $540.00
Although many museums remain closed due to the pandemic, you can still support your favorite art institutions with a visit to their online stores. A great gift for young art lovers, skater kids, or Nara fanatics.
FOR THE HUNGRY HUMANITARIAN
In response to NYC’s surging homelessness crisis, The Coalition for the Homeless has collaborated with 50 leading artists to launch the Artist Plate Project.
Artware Editions: Coalition for the Homeless
Retail: $175.00
Leave no plate empty this holiday season with this luminous limited-edition dinner plate designed by Charles Gaines! With 100% of the funds going to NYC’s Coalition for the Homeless, the purchase of just one plate can feed up to 75 of New York City’s hungry and homeless residents.
Known for his exploration of the interplay between sources of good and evil, Hancock’s flatware invites diners to consider this duality in respect to the food we eat.
Artadia
Retail: $350.00
This cutlery set by Trenton Doyle Hancock is the only bone you should be picking over the holidays. Buy this limited-edition set and give back to Artadia, a national nonprofit organization that identifies innovative visual artists and supports them with unrestricted financial awards and connections to a network of opportunities.
Designed in collaboration with the Easton Foundation, these poetic dinner plates are drawn from Bourgeois’s Ode À La Bièvre, a fabric book made from fragments of the artist’s old clothing.
Hyperallergic in collaboration with Third Drawer Down
Retail: $60.00
Everything tastes better when served on fine china featuring imagery by the celebrated late artist, Louise Bourgeois.
This beautiful set of 9 limited-edition tea towels are available for purchase individually or in a full set.
Tina Kim Gallery in Support of Doctors Without Borders
Retail: $100.00
Cleanliness is at the top of our list this year, so why not dry your hands (and dishes!) with a piece of art? In support of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)’s COVID-19 response efforts, Tina Kim Gallery has launched Art Without Borders, partnering with their gallery artists, including Ghada Amer.
Featuring Kusama’s signature polka dot and repeated faces, the mugs are wrapped in the 2009 artwork Late Night Chat is Filled with Dreams.
Hyperallergic in collaboration with Third Drawer Down
Retail: $56.00
Add an artful twist to your daily coffee respite with this set of two bone china mugs by sensational Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. A collaboration with the artist and Third Drawer Down, proceeds raised support Hyperallergic, a critical, independent arts publication.
FOR THE GARMENT-LOVING GIVERS
Every purchase made from the SFMOMA supports the museum’s exhibitions and education programs.
SFMOMA
Retail: $12.00 / Member Price: $10.80
Can one ever have enough socks? Keep toes warm this winter with this pair featuring our polka-dot queen, Yayoi Kusama, herself. Unisex and available in multiple sizes, this set is the perfect gift for those who need of a little humor this year.
Profit from the sale of this Mickalene Thomas scarf supports MOCA, Los Angeles museum programming.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Retail: $140.00 / Member Price: $126.00
Drape yourself in this elegant, wearable work of art by Mickalene Thomas. A collaboration with Third Drawer Down, this delicate silk scarf depicts the artist’s 2007 painting, A Little Taste Outside of Love, a commentary on the representation and objectification of women by male artists, and declaration of female empowerment.
Proceeds from the sales support Hyperallergic.
Hyperallergic
Retail: $14.00
There is no such thing as too many socks, especially when they celebrate masterpieces like “No. 7, Adulthood” from Hilma af Klint’s Paintings for the Temple, where each number represents a stage of development from childhood to adulthood.
Handmade in the UK by Fine Cell Work, a charity that runs rehabilitation programs in British prisons, this Geta Brătescu collage cushion is available for purchase online at Hauser & Wirth (Image Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth).
Hauser & Wirth: Benefitting Fine Cell Work
Retail: $160.00
Gift comfort and give back with this beautiful pink and yellow Geta Brătescu throw pillow. Each cushion is handmade in the UK by Fine Cell Work, a charity that runs rehabilitation programs in British prisons, boosting self-worth and fostering self-discipline by training prisoners in highly skilled needlework.
A fair trade product with support from the Tiny Miracles Foundation, which helps women in Mumbai, India achieve financial independence.
SFMOMA Gift Shop
Retail: $28.00 / Member Price: $25.20
Made of recyclable coated paper, this paper vase cover, with a print featuring Composition with red, yellow, blue and black by Piet Mondrian, fits over almost any empty bottle. Thanks to the special pre-folded triangular structure, you can create your own model. (9.4 x 5.5 x 16.5 inches)
Exclusive to House of Voltaire, a leading UK-based nonprofit arts organization, this luxurious double-sided throw is made of 100% cashmere.
Sanya Kantarovsky Cashmere Throw
House of Voltaire
Retail: £1,200.00 (Edition of 75)
There’s no better way to curl up by the fire than with a limited-edition blanket designed by contemporary painter Sanya Kantarovsky. Sales from this special edition raise funds for The Studio Voltaire Capital Project, a non-profit arts organization creating affordable artists’ studios and accessible exhibition spaces.
FOR THE BOOK-LOVING BENEFACTOR
Following the mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi who have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support.
Artbook
Retail: $49.95
Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent this book sheds new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.
We are passionate about the publisher Thames & Hudson as their mission has been to create a ‘museum without walls’, making accessible to a large reading public the world of art and the research of top scholars.
Abstract Art: A Global History
Thames & Hudson
Retail: £65.00
Moving well beyond the established figures and movements usually associated with abstract art, and focusing on subject matter and content rather than simply colour and form, Karmel reconsiders the history of abstraction from a global perspective, showing us how artists from all parts of the world have used abstract imagery to convey personal, social and political experience.
Mehretu’s oeuvre is well represented, including works from her landmark shows Drawing into Painting, the twelve-panel intaglio, Auguries, and the works she created from her time spent in Africa and the Middle East
SFMOMA
Retail: $65.00 / Member’s price: $58.50
Seeing this exhibition was definitely a highlight of 2020, and this exhibition catalogue does not disappoint. Over the past twenty-five years Julie Mehretu has emerged as a major force in contemporary art and this sumptuous volume allows for close viewing of Mehretu’s vast canvases.
FOR THE COVID-CONSCIOUS CONTRIBUTOR
Inspired by nature’s dramatic colorful transformations, Khan’s Time Past, Time Present, 2020, is composed of layers of blue sheet music from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Frieze x Deutsche Bank Emerging Curators Fellowship
Retail: $53.76
Keep covered and let this striking Idris Khan-designed protective mask do the talking. Sustainably sourced and signed by the artist, proceeds from the masks benefit the inaugural Frieze x Deutsche Bank Emerging Curators Fellowship, which aims to combat racial disparities by providing a Black or POC curator with a placement at London’s Chisenhale Gallery.
Artists: Jenny Holzer, Rashid Johnson, Barbara Kruger, Raymond Pettibon, Lorna Simpson and Rosemarie Trockel.
Wedel Art Collective: Benefitting COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, Artist Relief, and Common Practice
Retail: $53.76
Stay safe and look great doing so with these fabulous limited edition artist-designed face masks. Wedel Art Collective has partnered with six leading contemporary artists to create sustainable cotton masks in support of three wonderfully deserving organizations: the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund (WHO), Artist Relief, and Common Practice.
FOR THE COMPASSIONATE COLLECTOR
Here Simpson’s collage is part of an on-going series of works that incorporate appropriated imagery from vintage Jet and Ebony magazines, immersing viewers in layers of bewitching paradoxes.
ARTISTS SUPPORT X UNTIL FREEDOM
Retail: $35,000.00 (unique work on paper)
For those wanting to splurge for a good cause and great art, look no further. Here Lorna Simpson’s fabulous collage “Queen Butterfly” is being sold to UNTIL FREEDOM, a non-profit dedicated to funding those who are the most directly impacted by cyclical poverty, inequality, and state violence.
Portraying what the artist calls the “theater of public life,” Weaver’s works capture specific moments in time and transformative turning points between figures in her suggested narratives.
ART FOR CHANGE
Retail: $750.00 (Edition of 30 signed and numbered)
ART FOR CHANGE has partnered with artist Grace Weaver in support of this year’s Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Forum. The Curatorial Forum convenes 40 US curators annually to generate conversations about the civic responsibilities of museums, topics of accessibility, regionalism, and racial equity.
Printed in rich purple ink, the bust-length portrait is a quintessential example of Elizabeth Peyton’s deft draftsmanship and admiring eye.
The Drawing Center
Retail: $2,500.00 (Edition of 30 signed)
Nico + Flowers (Nico Muhly), a new limited edition print by renowned artist Elizabeth Peyton. Co-published with Specific Object, Peyton’s linocut was created at the legendary Two Palms Press in SoHo and depicts Nico Muhly, an American composer who sat for Peyton this spring, at the start of the global pandemic.
Josephine Pryde lives and works in Berlin and London. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at ICA Philadelphia, Wattis Institute SF, Kunsthalle Bern, and and Secession, Vienna, among others.
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art
Retail: $1,000.00 (Edition of 30 signed)
For those fond of souvenirs, American artist Josephine Pryde has created the ultimate snow globe sculpture held up by an elegant silver hand. This limited edition sculpture was designed in collaboration with Pryde’s solo exhibition at the Wattis Institute in 2015 and the proceeds go to support this important local museum.
Born in 1936 in Chicago, Kasten’s work explores abstraction, architecture, and the interaction of light and shadow through her photographs and installations.
Printed Matter
Retail: $1,500.00 (Edition of 25 signed and numbered)
Signed and Numbered
In Kasten’s photograph Composition PM/XX, 2020 the dance of colors and reflections are created by the staging and layering of vividly colored translucent acrylic blocks. Described by the artist as “a little jewel-box”, this edition funds Printed Matter, a non-profit organization dedicated to the publication and dissemination of artists’ books and related publications.
FOR THE PAPER-PLEDGING PATRONS
From the 2019 SECA Art Award, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. Image: Marlon Mullen, Untitled, 2018.
Bay Area Arts Organizations
For those wanting to contribute directly to our local arts community in this time of need, please find links below to a list of incredible organizations that we are involved with and support!
