Image: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C ; Tate, Photo Yili Liu
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., will host a gallery discussion on September 4 examining the musical environments associated with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy, shortly before the exhibition ‘Basquiat × Banksy’ closes on September 7. The one-hour programme, titled ‘Gallery Experience: Musical Soundscapes from Hip Hop to Trip Hop,’ is scheduled for noon to 1 p.m.
Author and music scholar Adrian Loving will lead the discussion, focusing on the influential music scenes that developed in Brooklyn and Bristol during the 1980s and 1990s. According to the Hirshhorn’s event announcement, the programme will consider how those scenes influenced the upbringing and artmaking of Basquiat and Banksy.
The event is presented as a gallery experience connected directly to ‘Basquiat × Banksy,’ an exhibition pairing work by the two artists. The museum’s announcement identifies Sunday, September 7, as the exhibition’s closing date, making the September 4 discussion one of its final scheduled interpretive programmes.
Basquiat was born in Brooklyn in 1960 and died in 1988, according to the exhibition image credit. Banksy is identified there as anonymous and as born in Bristol, England, in 1973. The pairing therefore connects an artist associated with New York’s late-1970s and 1980s creative networks with a British artist whose identity remains undisclosed and whose work is linked to Bristol.
The Hirshhorn’s installation credit identifies works by both artists in the exhibition. It lists Banksy’s ‘Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search’ from 2018, made in acrylic and wax marker on birch wood, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump’ from 1982, an acrylic, crayon and spray-paint work on canvas. The credited Banksy work is described as being from a private collection and shown courtesy of Pest Control Office, Banksy, London; the Basquiat work is also listed as from a private collection, with copyright credited to the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat and licensing by Artestar, New York.
The discussion’s focus on hip hop and trip hop places the exhibition’s cross-generational pairing within a broader account of music, place and artistic formation. Its specific emphasis is not a general survey of either artist’s career, but the relationship between the Brooklyn and Bristol music scenes of the 1980s and ’90s and the artists’ development. ‘Gallery Experience: Musical Soundscapes from Hip Hop to Trip Hop’ takes place at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on Friday, September 4, from noon to 1 p.m.; ‘Basquiat × Banksy’ must close on Sunday, September 7.
