Cranbrook Art Museum’s Latest Exhibits Explore Street Art

Keith Haring, Jean Michael Basquiat, and Detroit artists will be on display
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Ryan McGinness Screen Combine-47-2016.jpgWith a focus on exploring the various forms street art can take, Bloomfield Hills-based Cranbrook Art Museum is debuting four exhibitions this month that spotlight work by Keith Haring, Jean-Michael Basquait, and Detroiters Ryan McGinness and Maya Stovall.

The Keith Haring: The End of the Line exhibit chronicles the late artist’s time creating a mural at Cranbrook in the late ‘80s, while Basquiat Before Basquiat: East 12th Street, 1979-1980, a traveling exhibit organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, displays the entire body of work made by the artist, who died in 1988, when he lived with his friend Alexis Adler in New York City’s East Village.

A large-scale installation by McGinness, a contemporary artist who designed a temporary Detroit skate park in August with Tony Hawk, is on display in Ryan McGinness: Studio Views and Collection Views, and the Maya Stovall: Liquor Store Theatre Performance Films exhibit features a series of films of dance routines set in front of liquor stores in Detroit’s McDougall-Hunt neighborhood.

According to Andrew Blauvelt, director of Cranbrook Art Museum, all four artists are connected because they have worked “in and around the street,” but not in an obvious way.

“I hope we expand what [visitors] think about when people say, ‘street art’ [and] the different manifestations that can take,” he says. “It’s not always just a mural on the side of the building.”

An ArtMembers Exclusive Reception for the new exhibits will be held from 6 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 17. As part of this event, which is reserved for the museum’s members, guests will receive a first look at the galleries as well as cocktails and appetizers. Those who are not museum members can purchase a $15 ticket to attend the Opening Preview Party the same night from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. During that time, they will also have the chance to view the new exhibits.

The exhibitions, which will run through March, will open to the public on Nov. 18. From 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. that same day, an event, called Boom for Real: A Conversation on Jean-Michael Basquiat, will be held. Free with museum admission, exhibition curator Nora Abrams of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Basquiat’s friend Adler, and other experts of the artist will host a panel about his influence in contemporary art.


For more information about the exhibits and opening events, visit cranbrookartmuseum.org