The Keith Haring Foundation Makes $500,000 Grant to New
Museum
Second Major Gift by Foundation Continues Support of
School, Teen, and Family Programs
New York, NY…Lisa Phillips, Toby
Devan Lewis Director of
the New Museum, has announced that theKeith
Haring Foundation has
made a generous gift of $500,000 to
support and name the Museum’s
School, Teen, and Family programs. The Foundation previously
made a $1 million gift in
2008 to establish the School and Youth Programs Fund and to
name the Keith
Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public
Engagement—a post currently held by Johanna Burton.
Keith Haring’s work, created from an iconic language of
signature lines and symbols, blurs the boundaries between
art, popular culture, and the urban environment, and mirrors
the New Museum’s own ideals of fearlessness, activism
through art, and accessibility to broad audiences. This
second major gift continues this legacy and celebrates the
artist’s devotion to public service through art.
Thanks to the continued partnership with the Keith Haring
Foundation, the New
Museum’s School, Teen, and Family programs have
flourished, serving a greatly expanded audience of students,
teachers, and families. Over the last six years, the New
Museum has welcomed approximately twenty
thousand young people and families to
participate in education and community programs. The vast
majority of these participants are from the Museum’s
surrounding neighborhood in the Lower East Side including
Chinatown and the East Village. The next phase of the
partnership will prioritize bringing youth together around
issues of social responsibility.
“The New Museum’s Keith Haring School, Teen, and Family
programs are essential to opening young people’s minds and
inspiring learning about the world through contemporary
art,” said Lisa Phillips. “With this essential support from
the Keith Haring Foundation, we provide free access to the
Museum and expose young and diverse audiences to new art and
ideas.”
“With this gift, the Keith Haring Foundation is delighted to
continue our collaboration with the New Museum,” said Julia
Gruen, the Foundation’s Executive Director. “We remain
deeply impressed by the Museum’s continuing effort to seek
out and highlight vibrant contemporary artists who share
Keith Haring’s spirit and energy. We are committed to
supporting the Museum’s youth and school program fund and
securing the curatorial position as a tribute to Keith’s
dedication to inspiring and working with young people,
something that was very close to his heart.”
The Keith Haring School
and Youth Programs Fund supports
the New Museum’s innovative Global
Classroom (G:Class) program
for high school students. The G:Class program employs
contemporary art and artists to strengthen students’ and
teachers’ awareness of global culture and to develop visual
literacy and critical thinking skills both in the classroom
and at the Museum. Other Education programs that are
supported include the monthly First
Saturdays for Families program, Teen
Nights, the annual neighborhood Block
Party, and the Department’s most recent programmatic
addition, theExperimental
Study Program for Teens (ESP). This fall, the New Museum
launched ESP, a ten to twelve week, application-based
Experimental Study Program for young people aged fifteen to
twenty years old. The program offers twelve teen
participants the chance to work closely with artists, engage
in critical discussions around contemporary art and culture,
and contribute directly to the New Museum’s ongoing
commitment to social analysis and change by involving youth
in research and development projects connected to the
Museum’s public programs.
About Keith Haring
During his lifetime (1958–90), Haring was keenly aware of
the positive impact that early exposure to artwork and
uncensored creative expression can have in expanding a
child’s view of the world, and he made it a priority to work
with youth of all ages and backgrounds. “Children are the
bearers of life in its simplest and most joyous form,”
Haring said. He dedicated himself to an array of
youth-oriented projects, such as collaborating on murals
with kids in America's inner cities, and leading drawing
workshops at museums internationally. Between 1982 and 1989,
he produced more than fifty public artworks in dozens of
cities around the world, in many cases for charities,
hospitals, children’s day-care centers, and orphanages. In
1986, he worked with nine hundred at-risk teens to create a
mural for the centennial anniversary of the Statue of
Liberty. In 1989, he painted a 450-foot plywood wall in
Grant Park in Chicago as the debut project of Gallery 37, an
annual summer arts program for inner-city youth. He
collaborated on this mural with five hundred public school
children, after which the individual panels were donated to
and divided among the participating schools. Through this
extensive work with young people, Haring tirelessly promoted
the idea that racial, cultural, and sexual differences are
insignificant compared to our common humanity. In 1989,
Haring established the Keith Haring Foundation to ensure
that his philanthropic legacy would continue indefinitely.
Keith Haring, New Museum,
and the Bowery Neighborhood
The New Museum was founded in 1977, the year before Haring
moved to New York, at a time when a thriving downtown
alternative art community was developing outside of the
traditional gallery and museum system. The newly founded
Museum and the newly arrived artist both quickly settled
into the emerging scene. From 1981 to 1986, Haring lived and
worked nearby, at the intersection of Broome Street and
Bowery, and befriended fellow downtown artists Kenny Scharf
and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as the musicians,
performance artists, and graffiti writers who comprised the
burgeoning downtown art community. Swept up in the energy
and spirit of the time, he began to organize and participate
in exhibitions and performances on the streets of New York
and at alternative venues. In 1982, the artist created a
limited-edition lithograph for the New Museum’s collection.
He also painted a fluorescent mural at Houston Street at
Bowery on what was then a cement handball court. Haring’s
work was in early group exhibitions in the New Museum’s
former SoHo location, including “Events: Fashion Moda” in
1981 and “Language, Drama, Source, and Vision” in 1983. The
New Museum’s 2004 exhibition “East Village USA” celebrated
Haring’s influence on the downtown arts community and the
more recent 2012 exhibition “Come Closer: Art Around the
Bowery 1969–89” included Haring’s graffiti-covered front
door to his former apartment in the Bowery neighborhood.
Visit the New Museum’s Bowery Artist Tribute for more
information on Haring and other artists who had a strong
impact on the Bowery neighborhood.
About The Keith Haring
Foundation
Established by the artist in 1989, the Keith Haring
Foundation’s mission is to sustain, expand, and protect the
legacy of Keith Haring, his art, and his ideals. The
Foundation supports not-for-profit organizations that assist
children, as well as organizations involved in education,
research, and care related to AIDS. Visit haring.com for
more information.
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