‘Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody’ Exhibit Now Open at The Broad
- By: Ashley Joy Parker
- June 22, 2023
“Art is nothing if you don’t reach every segment of the people….”
-Keith Haring
Keith Haring’s legacy lives on.
The highly-anticipated exhibition Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody is finally open to the public at The Broad. The show marks the first ever museum exhibition in Los Angeles to present Haring’s expansive body of work and features over 120 artworks and archival materials.
Known for his use of vibrant color, energetic linework and iconic characters like the barking dog and the radiant baby, Haring continues to dissolve barriers between art and life and spread joy, all while being rooted in the creative spirit and mission that art is for everybody. Haring’s signature pop art style emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s and his animated imagery was often used for social activism.
The exhibition, curated by Broad curator and exhibition manager Sarah Loyer explores both Haring’s artistic practice and life, with much of the source material for the exhibition coming from his personal journals.
Divided into 10 galleries in total, the expansive exhibition features a multitude of mediums Haring worked within, including video, sculpture, drawing, painting, and graphic works, as well as representations from the artist’s enormous output of public projects, from the subway drawings to his public murals.
Works presented span from the late 1970s when Haring originally from Reading, Pennsylvania, was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York up until 1988, just two years before the artist died from AIDS-related illness at the age of 31. Haring’s participation in nuclear disarmament and anti-Apartheid movements are featured prominently in the show, as well as works that take on complex issues that remain crucial today from environmentalism, capitalism, and the proliferation of new technologies to religion, sexuality and race.
In the last gallery, significant works from the late 1980s are accompanied by framed posters illustrating the artist’s activism within the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Major works held in the Broad collection such as Untitled, 1984 and Red Room, 1988 will be on view in addition to key loans from many institutional and private collections, including art, ephemera and documentation provided by the Keith Haring Foundation in New York, established by the artist in 1989.
The show also features immersive elements, such as a gallery lit by blacklight soundtracked by playlists created by the artist himself. Additionally, the Shop at The Broad has been transformed, taking inspiration from Haring’s artistic retail space The Pop Shop, which first opened in 1986 in the SoHo neighborhood of New York.
Following its debut at The Broad, Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody will travel to the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, from Nov. 11 to March 17, 2024, and to the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, from April 27 to Sept. 8, 2024.
Tickets to the exhibition, running now through Oct. 8, are available at thebroad.org.
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