CAP-a-Palooza Art Sale - Dec 6-14
An annual fundraising SALE of not-new art donated by community members!
Read all about our 2024 CAP-a-Palooza Vintage Art Sale! You'll see donation dates, what we do and do not accept and sale dates!
If you'd like to be reminded to drop off work or if you have questions, email Program Director Robin Schwartz, programs@artspartner.org
WHAT IS the CAP-a-PALOOZA ART SALE?
CAP-a-Palooza is an annual fundraiser of the Community Arts Partnership (CAP), held over 10 days each December. The 2023 sale raised over $14,000, which was $4,000 more than 2022!
(Learn more about CAP programs, events and grants on this website.)
How CAP-a-Palooza Works:
We collect donations of not-new art from community members who are downsizing or have unused or unloved art that they can part with. (Details and dates below.) We then hold a 9 day sale!
The sale works well on two levels. Hundreds of people find joy in purchasing and coming to see what we have collected, AND community members feel good about donating their downsized art collection to a good cause.
Note: We do not ask local artists to donate their own work.
The art that is donated can be vintage or contemporary, professional or amateur. Needlepoints your Aunt Sally did in 1974 are right up our alley.
Work is priced low so we can sell as much as possible in 9 days. Prices drop throughout the sale and are slashed on the last couple of days.
Location - CAP ArtSpace
The donation and sale location are in the same room - the CAP ArtSpace Gallery in the Tompkins Center for History and Culture at 110 N. Tioga Street (on the Ithaca Commons).
EVENT DATES
Fri, Dec 6, 5pm to 8pm
Sat, Dec 7 - Sat, Dec 14, noon to 6pm
(closed Sun, Dec 8)
The sale starts on Friday, December 6th (gallery night in downtown Ithaca) from 5pm to 8pm and will run through Saturday the 14th.
DONATION DATES and PARKING
Mon to Wed, December 2nd to 4th.
2pm - 6pm each day
We accept donations on December 2nd, 3rd or 4th from noon to 6pm. If you'd like an emailed reminder sent to you in late November, email Robin at programs@artspartner.org
We can not accept work before December 2nd unless it is something really amazing... (mostly because we don't have storage space, and staff works remotely). We also can not pick up work. If you can't come on the above dates, maybe you can enroll a friend or family in delivering it for you!
We will have a hand cart and a volunteer available who can help you bring stuff into the building.
Parking: The closest you can get to the front door of our building is on Seneca Street, pulling up alongside M&T Bank on the Commons. There are a few 15 minute parking spots. Our building, the Tompkins Center for History and Culture, at 110 N. Tioga (on the Commons) , is just to the left of M&T. We DO have a back door to our building but for various reasons, it's not a good place to unload.
Feel free to email with parking details.
WHAT WE DO & DO NOT ACCEPT:
CONSIDER DONATING:
Art that you inherited, that you'd like to downsize, that you received as gifts that have been piled in your closets for 20 years, or art that reminds you of people you don't want to be reminded of. If you are ready to pass it on, donate it to CAP.
It can be professional or amateur, old or new. We love cool and funky vintage stuff.
Donated work can include paintings, photography, and all other 2D types of work. We also love sculptures (small - under 16" tall), embroidery, handmade pottery, fiber art, and other functional art.
We do not ask working artists to donate their own work. Having said that, some artists like to downsize their stock and give us work that is older.
If you have any questions, email Robin.
CONDITION OF THE ART:
Please donate work that is in good shape (no mold, no broken glass, or broken frames) and has been cleaned. (If you can clean the work and glass before you bring it to us, that would be amazing and a HUGE help.)
INFORMATON and STORIES:
(Totally optional, but greatI). If you can decipher or interpret a hard-to-read signature for us, have interesting stories about the work, or where you purchased it, it would be wonderful if you could write that down and tape it to the work. One short sentence is good: i.e. "Aunt Ginny made this in her 1963 still life watercolor class;" or "I purchased this in Juneau, Alaska at a gallery in the 80's" or "This was a gift from a student from Japan."
WE DO NOT ACCEPT THE FOLLOWING and may turn it away:
(There may be exceptions if something is fabulous. Feel free to send images in questions to Robin)
- Rolled up work
- Loose posters, or posters on foam core, unless framed.
- Work that is loose and not framed or matted. (Matted work is fine!)
- Books
- Old masters print portfolios that everyone seemed to have in 1954.
- Work that has mold, broken glass, or broken frames. (You can try cleaning - sometimes there is mold on the inside of a glass frame that can be cleaned up for us!)
- Work that is disintegrating, peeling or flaking.
- Work that weighs over 20 pounds.
- Work that is larger than 40" wide/high.
HOW WE PRICE WORK and ORGANIZE THE SALE
Work is priced really low to that we can sell 500 items in 9 days. Prices range from $1 to $65 (mostly - with a few pieces priced from $75 to $400).
Prices are determined by CAP staff (with advice from appraisers).
If you believe something is of high value that you'd love us to know about, please attach a note! Sometimes we send donated art to auction houses or ebay.
We have a couple of art appraisers that come and look over everything before the sale starts to see if there is anything of great value. We also look up many items on ebay as they arrive, to see if similar or the same work by an artist has sold.
If you'd like to research ebay or other accessible sites ahead of time, make sure you check on what similar art sold for, not what it is selling for Check "completed sales."
AFTER THE SALE:
Work that doesn't sell is either stored for the following year, or we have a free day for local not for profit organizations.
WE KEEP TRACK OF DONORS, but not DONATIONS
We keep track of the people who donate art, but not what they donated. Sometimes donors want to know if their work sold and the only way to know that is to stop by at the end of the sale to see!
DONATED WORK IS TAX EXEMPT
CAP is a not for profit charitable organization and can give you a signed receipt for your donations. Note that the donor fills in the value of the donated work and/or a list of what was donated. We just provide a date and a signature.
We thank our generous annual sponsor of the ArtSpace Gallery. Thank you so much, Coughlin and Gerhart