The Brant Foundation is opening a new space in NYC, and their inaugural exhibit is a free Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition that opens today (March 6)!
The new Brant Foundation Art Study Center in the East Village is located in the 16,000-square-foot building at 421 East 6th Street (between First Avenue and Avenue A) that previously belonged to ConEd for nearly a century. With four floors of exhibit space covering 7,000-square-feet, the foundation will also include a landscaped roof terrance and two gardens. Their debut exhibition will solely include works by Jena-Michel Basquiat, “reconnecting the East Village to a seminal figure of its past.” Brant goes on to say that “Basquiat has been a cornerstone of the East Village art scene for decades, and to bring his work back to the neighborhood that inspired it is a great privilege.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit was curated by Brant Foundation founder Peter M. Brant and Dr. Dieter Buchhart in collaboration with the Foundation Louis Vuitton. According to their announcement:
“The inaugural exhibition will bring together Basquiat’s most important masterworks from the Brant Collections as well as from international museums and private collections. Dr. Buchhart says, “The retrospective will show Basquiat as a resolutely contemporary artist who created a foretaste of our Internet society by using cut-and-paste sampling from his surroundings. With the astonishing radicalness of his artistic practice, Basquiat renewed the concept of art with enduring impact.” As a collector of Basquiat’s work since the 1980s, Peter M. Brant has amassed a collection of some of the artist’s most important works from throughout his career.”
This exhibit will run until May 12 of this year, with free tickets available. However, even though there is currently a waitlist for tickets, many will still be able to attend. Just yesterday they announced on Instagram that 500 people were taken off the waitlist for opening day! So there’s certainly still a chance you’ll be able to get in. Add your name to the waitlist here.
What: Inaugural Jean-Michel Basquiat Exhibition
Where: 421 East 6th Street
When: March 6 – May 12
featured image source: Brant Foundation Exhibit Poster