KEITH HARING
Art Is for Everybody
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
April 27–September 8, 2024
TO MY FRIENDS AT HORN
Keith Haring and Iowa City
Stanley Museum of Art,
The University of Iowa
May 4, 2024–January 27, 2025
IS ANY OTHER ARTIST simultaneously as well-known and as little understood by the general public as Keith Haring? Viewed out of context, the simplicity of his iconic characters—the crawling baby, the barking dog, the stripped-down and gyrating human form—makes them easily digestible, even to non-art lovers. Through the work of the Keith Haring Foundation, they are also ubiquitous in marketing, from T-shirts to branding for organizations like Best Buddies International. The small-town boy from Kutztown, Pennsylvania, certainly did make it big.
This leads, however, to the main criticism lobbed at Haring’s work:
Philip Clark, who lives near Washington D.C., is completing a biography of the gay publisher H. Lynn Womack.
