A Keith Haring exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame illuminates the late pop artist

Keith Haring is baring all. In a 1986 Annie Leibovitz photograph, the late pop artist, famous for his public art in 1980s New York City, stands in a studio space staged to look like a living room. He’s covered the white walls with black graffiti-like symbols—and he’s painted himself as well. Haring is stark naked, his body covered in dark lines that nearly camouflage him against the background. Haring and Leibovitz decided to take the show on the road, the story goes, walking to Times Square so the photographer could capture the artist’s portrait outside. In the winter. The police officers patrolling the area didn’t pay them any attention, she later recalled.

This is one of the stories Shannon Bailey, chief curator of the World Chess Hall of Fame, tells to illustrate a point: Haring existed exactly when he was supposed to—but not just because it’s impossible to think of him without conjuring images of graffiti on the NYC subways or the artist bopping around with Basquiat and Warhol. Haring’s work raised awareness of AIDS and the anti-apartheid movement. And as revealed in “Keith Haring: Radiant Gambit,” an exhibit of his pieces at the WCHOF, his works are still relevant today.

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