Where Art Meets the Board, Skaters and Shakers Mingle

Money raised from the sale of Paul McCarthy-designed skateboards benefits Skateistan

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Thanks to this weekend’s Armory Show, there were lots of little art parties around town.

One of the more eclectic ones started with a hip set of cocktails in the Agnes Gund Garden Library at the Museum of Modern Art on the late side Friday night and rolled down to a laid-back dinner at the Chef’s Club on Mulberry Street.

This was the launch of a series of skateboards as interpreted by the Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy. The skateboards are being sold in limited editions to benefit Skateistan, a nongovernmental organization that uses skateboarding to empower youth in countries like Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa. The money raised from Mr. McCarthy’s project will fund a skate park and a youth education center in Johannesburg.

“Skateboarding is only 35% of what we do. Sixty-five percent is education. Skateboarding is just the hook,” said Oliver Percovich as he nibbled on some salad at the Chef’s Club. A 40-year-old former scientist, Mr. Percovich founded Skateistan in 2007 after several years in emergency management in Australia researching natural disasters.

“It’s an awesome way of helping the most vulnerable and toughest kids,” he explained, of the skateboarding program. “If you’ve been working on the street in Kabul, you have an attention span of 15 seconds. But you put a skateboard in front of these kids and they’re like, ‘I’ll try that.’ It’s about turning them into youth leaders. It’s changed their lives, and now they want to teach other kids.” About half of the participants in the program are young women, Mr. Percovich said.

The art world connection happened when Mr. Percovich met Charles-Antoine Bodson in Berlin three years ago. At the time, “I was fed up with working in finance,” said Mr. Bodson, who is about to turn 40 and, as an avid skateboarder from his childhood, had amassed a collection of about 5,000 skateboards.

He sold much of his collection online and at auction to raise money for Skateistan. He also founded the Skateroom, a project that commissions artists to make skateboards. Mr. McCarthy is the fifth such artist to be involved. Ai Weiwei and Robin Rhode also have participated. His goal is to raise around $350,000 from his project with Mr. McCarthy—otherwise, he plans to pay for the skate park out of his own pocket, he said.

But does he still skateboard? “I had a triple hernia three years ago,” said Mr. Bodson. “I’m not really going to be doing sports anymore.”

Many of the guys who work for Mr. McCarthy, not to mention his son, are avid skateboarders. He’d seen Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons skateboards over the years, said Mr. McCarthy, “but it was sort of like, Maybe I’d buy one, but I wouldn’t make one.”

He’d read about Skateistan, however, and found its mission “kind of beautiful,” he said.

“And if our boards pay for the park, well that’s a good reason to make a skateboard,” Mr. McCarthy said. The skateboards feature photographs of performance objects the artist used in the ’70s and ’80s, “and they fit.”

Mr. McCarthy said he hopes that people skate on the boards, even though “the kids aren’t going to care if they’re art or not. I think it’d be great to see one that had been skated on a lot.”

He also used to skate himself with his son. “But I stopped,” said Mr. McCarthy. “It hurt too much.”

Besides Mr. McCarthy and his family and Mr. Bodson’s parents, Philippe and Antoinette Bodson, other guests at dinner included Ondine de Rothschild, Carole Radziwill, Meredith Ostrom and Guy Ullens, the billionaire founder of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing. Mr. Ullens had flown in for a day or two for Mr. Bodson’s launch from his home in Belgium. He plans to do a project with Mr. Bodson in China.

“I’m the crazy guy with the crazy ideas,” said Mr. Ullens.

But does he skateboard?

“No,” said Mr. Ullens, as he took a sip of red wine. “I’m 80. I’m all broken up.”