“The Librarian” and “A Brief History of Time” benches are really wonderful!
A similar thing was done by Disney for the 75th anniversary. They took a standard Mickey statue, and then let 75 (which became 78) artists paint them. Those statues were auctioned off, and the proceeds went to artist-selected charities. This article shows some of them, and says how they did.
http://www.yesterland.com/mickey75.html
I hope the bench auction finds success as well!
That’s nice… if you happen to live in London rather than anywhere else in the country 
I love these! Guess I’ll go on a bench hunt this summer. I wish they’d had some in between the four trail zones, to encourage a massive walk past all of them!
Apparently this is becoming a thing. Gibson did this here in Austin with 10 or so foot high guitars that were painted (or something) by various artists and placed on downtown corners. They were eventually auctioned off, but some were bought by businesses so that they could remain downtown. Sure, it’s advertising, but it is advertising done so well that you don’t mind. Gibson even had the good sense to leave their name off of the guitars (I think). I’d certainly welcome more of this type of thing. It’s a painless way of raising money. Here’s a collection of images https://www.google.com/search?q=austin+gibson+guitar+sculptures&client=firefox-a&hs=FNl&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=be23U7foNo6QqAb1koH4Cw&ved=0CDoQsAQ&biw=1360&bih=653
They have cows in a number of places and Hans Hummel in Hamburg - there are also quite a few other versions in different cities around the world
Until some chav points a spraycan at it…
…Until some hipster paints a spraycan on it…
The artist-decorated figures sold at auction remind me of A Community of Angels, a temporary art-for-charity project here in Los Angeles that placed several hundred fiberglass angels, decorated by different artists, around the city back in 2001-02, and then auctioned them off to benefit charities.
Some of them still turn up in odd corners of the city today - some auction buyers have installed them somewhere permanently (several are in their owners’ front yards), and some have been sold and traded to other owners.
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