Late-night comedian John Oliver has sold off a painting by beloved TV painter Bob Ross to help raise money for public media battered by cuts under the second MAGA administration.
Ross’s 1986 work Cabin at Sunset painting was the highlight of the John Oliver’s Junk auction.
The piece has now sold after 35 bids at auction for an astonishing $1,044,000, setting a new sale record for one of Ross’s paintings, Variety reports.
On Nov. 16, in the Last Week Tonight With John Oliver season 12 finale, Oliver had railed against Donald Trump’s decision to ax more than $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had otherwise supported hundreds of TV and radio stations across the country.
PBS and NPR, which the president has long railed against for a perceived anti-MAGA bias, have been hit particularly hard amid the wider cuts, with both now slashing back their services, programming, and staffing.
Oliver has now launched a new website, John Oliver’s Junk, selling items from the show’s run to date, with all proceeds going toward the Public Media Bridge Fund, which is providing temporary financial support to local broadcasters in the aftermath of Trump effectively closing down the CPB.
“We’ve actually accumulated a bunch of weird artifacts on this show over the years that we could definitely auction off to raise some much-needed money,” Oliver said last week.
“I am proud to announce last week tonight’s first-ever auction in aid of public media,” he went on. “This is real!”
Ross’s Cabin at Sunset accounts for the vast majority of the more than $1.54 million raised by the site so far. Other items include Russell Crowe’s jock strap from Cinderella Man, a pair of golden Adidas shoes, and an oversized sculpture of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s scrotum.
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