Keith Haring in 3D

A fresh perspective on the work of Keith Haring - one of the world’s most beloved contemporary artists - with a special focus on his three-dimensional work

From the moment he landed in NYC in 1978, Keith Haring took three-dimensional objects - whether discards on the street, household appliances, or subway walls - as his atypical canvas. From cars to vases to refrigerators and even a sarcophagus, these could often be rich sites of collaboration with artist contemporaries including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and LA2 (Angel Ortiz) among others. Extending his unmistakable mark-making to clothes, stage sets, and bodies inspired creative connections beyond the boundaries of the art world: Haring collaborated with the likes of Grace Jones, Bill T. Jones, Madonna, and Annie Leibovitz, the last of whom photographed Haring in an now-famous session during which he made his own body a canvas, painting himself to blend into an elaborate 3D environment. Although his career was brief, Keith Haring’s sculpture practice was a significant and integral facet of his extensive oeuvre, with his three-dimensional artworks found in museums and art collections worldwide.

Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Keith Haring in 3D illuminates this rarely explored dimension of Haring’s work, and its role in his enduring legacy. The book’s generous format and engaging design, including more than 350 illustrations, invites readers to immerse themselves in the world Haring created. Featuring archival photographs of Haring at work, stunning reproductions of his art in three dimensions, and a trove of essays by respected curators, scholars, and collectors, Keith Haring in 3D celebrates in stunning detail the buoyant, brilliant work of one of the world’s most iconic artists.

Keith Haring (1958-90) was an American artist born in Reading, PA. He moved to New York City in 1978 and began using the city as his canvas, making chalk drawings in subway stations. His art was eventually seen everywhere, from public murals and nightclubs to galleries and museums around the world. By the mid-1980s, he had befriended fellow artists Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and collaborated with celebrities like the singer Grace Jones. He was also known for his activism in promoting AIDS awareness. He died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990 at the age of thirty-one. He has been the subject of retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, among other venues, and his work is in the permanent collections of major museums around the world.

Larry Warsh has been active in the international art world for over thirty years as a publisher and artist-collaborator. An early collector of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warsh has loaned artworks by both artists to numerous exhibitions worldwide. Warsh continues to be involved with many notable publishing projects, most prominently as editor of the Princeton University Press -isms and Sketchbook series and essential references on Basquiat, Haring, Ai Weiwei, and other renowned artists.

Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian based in New York and London. The author most recently of A Century of Tomorrows (2024), he is currently Curator at Large for the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, Artistic Director for Design Doha―a biennial festival in Qatar―and editor of Material Intelligence, a quarterly online journal published by the Chipstone Foundation.

Dieter Buchhart is an art theorist and curator of numerous international exhibitions, including Keith Haring: The Political Line and Jean-Michel Basquiat: Boom for Real. Author of numerous art reviews, monographs and interviews for Kunstforum International and other art magazines, Dr. Buchhart holds doctorates in art history and art conservation. From 2007 to 2009, he was director of the Kunsthalle Krems near Vienna.

David Galloway (1937-2019) was an Amer­i­can nov­el­ist, cu­ra­tor, jour­nal­ist and academic. A grad­u­ate of Harvard University, he was the found­ing cu­ra­tor of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and a pro­fes­sor at the Ruhr Uni­ver­sity Bochum. As a longtime contributor the International Her­ald Tribune, he main­tained a close pro­fes­sional re­la­tion­ship with artists in­clud­ing Keith Har­ing, Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol. In the last decades of his life, he resided in both France and Ger­many.

Francis M. Naumann is a curator, art historian and former art dealer specializing in the Dada and Surrealist periods. He has written numerous articles, books, and exhibition catalogues, including New York Dada 1915-23, a definitive history of the movement. He is author of several books on Marcel Duchamp, including The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and a volume of the artist’s collected writings, published as The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost.

Lowery Stokes Sims is a specialist in modern and contemporary art, known for her decades-long commitment to diversity and inclusion in the art world. From 1972 to 1999 she was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she curated over thirty exhibitions. She then served as executive director at The Studio Museum in Harlem and Chief Curator for the Museum of Arts and Design. Sims is currently on the board of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and the Robert Pousette-Dart Foundation.

Robert Storr has been curator at the Museum of Modern Art, professor of modern art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and visual arts director of the Venice Biennale – the first American invited to assume that position. He served as dean of the School of Art at Yale University from 2006 to 2016. Also a practicing artist, Storr received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.