Jane Fonda Proves She's the Ultimate Gallery Girl by Raising $10 Million in a Single Night at Gagosian Beverly Hills

In between LA’s weekends of rainstorms, the clouds parted Tuesday night for Jane Fonda, Gagosian, and Christie s Art for a Safe and Healthy California, a ticketed event at the Beverly Hills gallery to raise funds to support California s fight to protect neighborhoods from toxic oil drilling. Hundreds of attendees, including some of the hosts, like Larry Gagosian and Aileen Getty, and co-hosts Wendy Schmidt and Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, came out in support of the activist and her grassroots environmental campaign.

"We, the Campaign for Safe and Healthy California, were told that the big oil companies were looking to spend $200 million to overturn a bill that Governor Newsom signed to protect people living in what the oil companies call sacrifice zones, [communities next to oil drilling areas]," Fonda told Vogue. "If people know the truth, they won t vote to keep oil wells drilling next to schools, and daycares, and playgrounds. We just need to get the word out, because $200 million can get a lot of TV ads out there. We can t match that, but we don t have to spend as much, because we have the truth."

Fonda s idea for an art auction to raise money in support of the cause quickly gathered momentum. She first approached her friend Ed Ruscha, who agreed to donate a piece, paving the way for others like Frank Gehry, Catherine Opie, Alex Israel, Kenny Scharf, Jonas Wood, Marilyn Minter, and more, to donate pieces, which amounted to a total of 30 works from 30 artists.

"When Jane said she wanted to do an event to help fight big oil, I was immediately on board—her enthusiasm is just contagious," said Derek Blasberg, who, through his role at Gagosian, also helped with outreach for the event. "The vast majority of [gathering these works for auction] was Jane s doing, though. There s no assistant. It s her sending every email. She s a force of nature."