A new show at the Tampa Museum of Art features Keith Haring, a graffiti artist who made the leap from mean streets to museums in the 1980s.
He was almost as famous as Andy Warhol, with whom he felt an affinity for the older artist's ability to challenge and merge the boundaries between high and low culture, fine and commercial art.
Haring was always canny about marketing himself and his work, was never averse to making a buck. But he was excoriated for opening the Pop Shop in lower Manhattan in 1986. Haring stocked the retail store with affordable posters, prints and mass-produced products he designed. He was considered a sellout, cashing in on his popularity, trivializing his art.
"Art and Commerce" at the Tampa Museum of Art is a very focused exhibition. The Pop Shop will be partly re-created in the small Bank of America Gallery. The walls will be painted using the templates from Haring's original mural.
Walls and cases will display prints and items that were for sale in the shop, along with original drawings the artist made for products ranging from Swatch watches to fashion collaborations. Many of the objects have never been publicly shown.
During the last years of his life, before he died of AIDS at 31 in 1990, Haring used his art to benefit children's organizations, hospitals, day care centers, hospices and orphanages.
