05/12/2026
Explore a selection of Keith Haring’s prolific subway drawings at The Brant Foundation’s “Keith Haring” exhibition, on view now in the East Village.
In December of 1980, Keith Haring began drawing on the empty subway panels. When an advertisement was removed, underneath would be a sheet of black matte paper. Haring realized it was the perfect surface to create something quick, recognizable, and impactful. Since arriving in the city two years earlier, he had been watching the graffiti/train culture, wanting to participate in his own way, and he had finally found how.
Every black panel became an opportunity to create. Sometimes he would make multiple drawings in a single station, and through the repetition of these images in one location, Haring created a kind of walk-through exhibition. A week later, the drawings would still be there; no one had tried to smudge or clean them. The beauty of these works is that these delicate drawings survived the brutal environment of the subway.
Almost immediately, people began to recognize him, and the act of drawing itself assumed a performative dimension. The subway became both studio and stage, and the audience was the everyday commuter.
Keith Haring, Art in Transit, New York City Subway, 1984
Photo by Tseng Kwong Chi © Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc.
Art © Keith Haring Foundation
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