'Street Art' Gets Some Highbrow Attention at Brooklyn Museum

The first large-scale exhibition to showcase the work of artist Keith Haring will open at the next Friday.

will include 155 works on paper, experimental videos, as well as over 150 archival objects, including rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs.

Haring first gained attention with chalk drawings in subway stations, with the "Radiant Baby" becoming his first recognizable symbol.

The exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum will chronicle Haring’s arrival in New York City through the years when he started his studio practice and began making public and political art on the city streets.  A fixture of downtown New York’s cultural scene, he befriended other influential artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf.

On view at the museum will be a number of very early works never before seen in public; seven video pieces, including Painting Myself into a Corner (his first video piece) and Tribute to Gloria Vanderbilt, as well as collages created from cut-up fragments of his own writing, history textbooks, and newspapers.

The exhibit will run from March 16 to July 8, in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, on the fifth floor of the museum. For more information, check out the museum’s web site.