Keith Haring: Art Is for Everybody
Near Reading, Pennsylvania
Keith Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up drawing constantly in nearby Kutztown. In the early nineteen eighties he began making chalk drawings in the blank advertising panels of New York City subway stations, and those drawings, with their bold outlines and kinetic figures, quickly captured the world's attention. Haring's work was joyful and urgent at the same time.
He used his art to address gay rights, HIV and AIDS awareness, racism, and environmentalism, bringing the energy of street art into galleries and public spaces around the globe. In nineteen eighty-nine he founded the Keith Haring Foundation to carry forward his belief that art belongs to everyone, not just to museums. He died in nineteen ninety at thirty-one years old, leaving a body of work that has never stopped speaking.
