bonneidee:

One July afternoon, a truck full of paper cranes arrived at the Brooklyn studio of Vik Muniz, a Brazilian-born artist known for building images from unconventional materials like diamonds, spaghetti and dust. “I was like, ‘Where are you going to put all these?’” he says. The birds had traveled a long way. After the Japanese earthquake in March, the nonprofit Bezos Family Foundation  invited children to mail origami cranes to the Seattle headquarters of its Students Rebuild program. Each would trigger a $2 donation, up to $200,000. The group received more than 2 million and doubled the donation. Last week, Muniz made a mosaic of a giant crane from smaller ones, for a fund-raising poster. “It’s alchemic,” he said. “The idea worked because everyone wanted to help.”

Jessica Bruder