MOPOP’s current special exhibition Keith Haring: A Radiant Legacy will be on view in the museum until March 23, 2025, offering visitors an immersive celebration of the iconic artist’s life, work, and activism through
- 240+ Keith Haring artworks and objects
- Curated selections from Haring’s personal 1980s art collection
- Examination of Haring’s friendships and collaborations with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Madonna, Grace Jones, and more
- A community youth partnership led by MOPOP’s Youth Advisory Board
- 20 artifacts from Haring artistic collaborator Angel Ortiz (LAII)
Who Is Angel Ortiz (LAII)?
- Angel Ortiz (b. 1967) grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side and began creating graffiti art at age ten. His signature tags—LA 2, LAII, and LA ROC “Little Angel”—soon began to attract attention, and a young Keith Haring introduced himself to LAII in 1980.
- The pair quickly bonded and began collaborating on paintings, murals, sculptures, and installations. By age fifteen LAII left school to spend the next six years working with Haring full time, splitting the profits of their mutual sales fifty-fifty.
- Though employing the same materials and often the same canvas, Haring and LAII maintained their own unique line styles; Keith favored a fluid, curving line, while Angel boasted a dense, calligraphic graffiti style known as “high and tight.”
- Their work together was notably symbiotic, with Haring introducing LAII to New York’s burgeoning gallery scene, while LAII provided Haring with what one critic called an “all-entry pass” into the practice and culture of New York’s street art scene.
In the decades since his ten years working alongside Haring, LAII has continued to excel in both graffiti and fine art. He lives and works on the Lower East Side, making paintings and sculptures that have been exhibited and collected by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art among many other institutions. The pieces chosen for this special exhibition represent some of the best examples of his mature work and of street art today, honoring an artist whose impact on Keith Haring and American visual culture truly cannot be measured.
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