Missing your favourite art haunts? The National Gallery of Victoria is leading the charge, along with other creative and cultural organisations, in offering art experiences online.

The NGV has launched a virtual tour of blockbuster exhibition Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines.

The exhibition brings together the works of two of the most significant and influential artists of the late twentieth century and features over 200 powerful works that address the many social and political issues of their time.

Keith Haring was an icon of New York’s 1980s LGBTIQ+ art scene whose bold dancing figures became synonymous with his name. Haring’s calling card was often a distinctive drawing left on a subway wall used to connect with a broader public beyond the museum walls. His work interrogated subjects spanning from the HIV/AIDS pandemic to the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Jean-Michel Basquiat ‘wield[ed] his brush as a weapon’, Haring once said, to create pieces about his experiences as a man of Puerto-Rican and Haitian descent in a primarily white art world. Basquiat was—and continues to be—an influential force in pop culture, with one of his works selling for $110.5 million and in the process, setting a record for the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist’s work.

Take the virtual tour: Crossing Lines exhibition with audio guide.

While you’re online you can also watch a video about the 2019 reinterpretation of Keith Haring’s 1984 NGV Waterwall mural. Discover how contemporary Indigenous Australian artists, whose practices intersect with public art, have been influenced by Haring’s work. Watch: Keith Haring’s NGV Waterwall. 

You can also find out about La Trobe University’s partnership with the NGV.

Image credit: Installation of Keith Haring | Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossing Lines at NGV International. © Keith Haring Foundation, New York © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York