AFRICAN RAINFOREST
CONSERVANCY’S
22ND ANNUAL ARTISTS FOR
AFRICA BENEFIT
NEW
YORK, NY (April 24, 2013) – The African Rainforest
Conservancy (ARC) celebrated Earth Week by hosting their 22nd
Annual Artists for Africa Spring Gala at The Bowery Hotel on
Tuesday, April 23rd. African Rainforest Conservancy’s Board
of Directors President Carter Coleman and Executive
Director Whitney Larkin welcomed over 200
guests, including
Lauren Hutton, Maria Bello, Cassandra Seidenfeld,
Gary Carrion-Murayari, Lindy Reilly, David Yamner,
Beth O'Donnell, Sheila Rooney, Peter Wirth
and
Dr. Joe Zammit-Lucia.
The
benefit began with a caviar and champagne reception in a
room filled to the brim with art from around the globe.
This year’s emcee was designer Nicole Miller
presented Thomas J. McGrath with a Lifetime
Achievement Award and also Hanz Brattskar, who on
behalf of Norway, accepted a New Species Award for the
country’s visionary championing of the planet as a whole.
CK Swett of Phillips was the night’s live art
auctioneer, selling pieces for the charity from the likes of
Spencer Tunick, Dustin Yellin and Lola
Montes Schnabel among others. Cadogan Tate, Chelsea
Framers, Coastal Aviation, Paddle8, Pointy Snout Caviar,
Selous Safari Company and VOSS sponsored the evening.
“Who would have thought that my bumping into a
21-year-old Vanderbilt student in Nashville would result in
the conservation of 3,500 square kilometers of African
rainforest? You could go to hundreds of mountain villages
in Tanzania 22 years ago and see the landscape stripped
of trees, the red soil washing away in the rains and the
streams gone in the dry season,” actress and ARC Advisory
Board member Lauren Hutton shared with the audience.
“You can go today and see the Garden of Eden, lush green
and year-round water. That’s what ARC does and that should
inspire us all to take on
climate change.”
For over 20 years,
African Rainforest Conservancy has worked alongside its
field partner the
Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG) to
support a network of 140 villages in eight mountain and
coastal regions throughout Tanzania that are protecting
3,000 square kilometers of forest – an area 1,000 times the
size of New York’s Central Park.
For more information on
African Rainforest Conservancy
please visit
www.africanrainforest.org