Keith Haring

Located on the second floor of the Harrison Library is a small display case, currently housing books on Keith Haring (1959-1990) as part of LGBT+ History Month 2025 on Activism and Social Change.

Keith Haring was an American artist who’s style of pop figures and dark thick lines is still highly recognisable today. He started as a graffiti artist in New York, and after his work on the walls of subways started getting public recognition in the 1980s, he started to get commissions, usually continuing to work on walls as his canvas.  

Haring was also openly gay and advocated loudly for safe sex and for AIDS recognition through his art. Haring himself was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and then AIDS in 1988 and died of complications of AIDS in 1990 at the age of only 31. In 1989 on World AIDS Day, he spoke about the relation between AIDS and his art: “My life is my art, it's intertwined. When AIDS became a reality in terms of my life, it started becoming a subject in my paintings. The more it affected my life the more it affected my work.”¹ Before his death he founded the Keith Haring Foundation, which continues his legacy of educating and informing the population about HIV and AIDS and provides funds. 

Haring was chosen by our collections librarian Katie as the focus for this display. “When asked to think about the theme Activism and Social change, my mind went without hesitation to Haring. I knew he was a gay activist and one of his paintings on AIDS has always stuck with me ever since I saw it online: “Unfinished Painting” from 1989. It is one of his last paintings before he died and he deliberately left it unfinished, I believe to represent his, and many others lives, being cut short due to AIDS and the active denial that many mainstream institutions had around the disease. It was ignored because it was ‘the gay disease’, but Haring did all that he could to make sure that it was known and that his community were aware of it and kept safe from it. This is a painting created before I was born, demanding that people look at it and understand the loss of human life that was happening with the AIDS epidemic by a man who himself was a victim of the epidemic, and it spoke to me through the years. So when I was asked to do a display for LGBT+ History Month, I wanted to honour Haring and his activism that touched many lives while he lived and continues to this day.” 

1. Hamilton, Denise (1989). "Artist With AIDS Races the Clock to Spread His Message: Art: The painter, who started his career by scrawling graffiti on subway cars, was at Art Center to paint a mural for 'A Day Without Art.'". Los Angeles Times. December 1st