Keith Haring: Grace House Mural opened

Museum director Kor Bonnema and artistic director Fabian de Kloe sounded the starting gun for the Keith Haring murals exhibition, the first of its kind in Europe. This opening was followed by an address by Muna Tseng - the dancer, choreographer and sister of photographer Tseng Kwong Chi, and also friend of Keith Haring in the early 1980s. She told a captive audience about her collaboration on the Epochal Songs dance performance, the friendship between her brother and Haring, about his work and about the dance she was to perform later that evening in SCHUNCK.

Jan Rothuizen

The audience also heard Jan Rothuizen speak. The Amsterdam-based artist got to know Haring when he was 18, before he became a household name. They regularly worked together in the 1980s. He shared a number of notable anecdotes from his time in New York, for example, about how Haring went round in sneakers, at a time - in contrast to today - when hardly anyone did that. Also, about how exceptional it was for Haring, who was openly gay, to form an anti-sound within the macho graffiti movement. And about how he called over to Haring in the street one day and said: “Hey, you’re Keith Haring!” to which Keith replied in a dry manner: “I know!” But above all, about how Haring made him realise that he was a genuine artist too.

The SCHUNCK Academy performance and the closing speech by Madeleine van Toorenburg (representing the Province of Limburg), during which she was presented with the book ‘Boundless Minds & Moving Bodies in 80’s New York´, provided the cue for those present to head off to the museum gallery. The positive response to the to the murals, photo works, tarp paintings, light art and many other was plain to see. Keith Haring never disappoints.