Keith Haring’s colorful, energetic designs—like his barking dogs or crawling stick figure-like radiant baby—have moved well beyond the world of street art over the past four decades and ingrained themselves as instantly recognizable pieces of pop art.
Now, the Broad is examining that body of work in a museum setting (for the first-ever time in L.A.) with this display of over 120 artworks and archival materials. The specially ticketed “Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody” explores the late New York graffiti icon’s artistic practices as well as his activism, including his work centered on nuclear disarmament, anti-Apartheid movements and the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The energetic show opens with a Day-Glo display of paintings and sculptures before moving into a wall-filling gallery of some of Haring’s most recognizable motifs. Alongside works on tarps, canvases and windows, you’ll find photos of Haring and an homage to Pop Shop, his New York retail shop (much of it set to a soundtrack pulled from the artist’s own mixtapes).
In conjunction with the show, the free-to-visit permanent galleries upstairs at the Broad will display works from Haring’s contemporaries, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf and Andy Warhol.
