Basquiat and Banksy Take Center Stage at the Hirshhorn

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will explore the connection between artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy in a new exhibition opening later this month.

Titled “Basquiat x Banksy,” the year-long show will feature two related paintings by the boundary-breaking artists: Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump and Banksy’s Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search. It’s the first time works created by either artist will be shown at the museum in Washington, D.C.

“Positioning Basquiat with Banksy brings into focus elements of Basquiat’s legacy, notably the movement of street art tropes into museums through his studio practice,” says Melissa Chiu, the Hirshhorn’s director, in a statement.

Basquiat was a prolific Neo-Expressionist artist who took inspiration from “hip-hop, jazz, graffiti, Beat literature, pop art, folk art, comics and even ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ to forge an emotionally charged style that still dazzles,” as Amy Crawford wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2017. He died in 1988 at age 27, but his legacy continues to endure.

The artist created Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump in 1982. The brightly colored piece depicts a skeletal boy standing with a dog beside an open fire hydrant (which are sometimes called “johnny pumps”). In 2020, American businessman Ken Griffin paid more than $100 million for the large piece, which stretches nearly 14 feet long.

“[Basquiat] wants to paint these figures, both dog and boy, from the inside out,” Hendrik Folkerts, a curator of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Johnson several months after the sale. He added that the bright hues around them represent a “blazing hot summer landscape.”

Several decades later, Banksy, the anonymous British street artist, created an homage to the piece called Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search. It features the same skeletal figures—but in this version, two police officers are patting down the boy.

Banksy painted the piece on a wall at London’s Barbican Center in 2017, when the museum was about to host an exhibition of Basquiat’s work. He also created another small mural depicting people waiting in line for a Ferris wheel. Banksy announced the new works on Instagram, writing: “Major new Basquiat show opens at the Barbican—a place that is normally very keen to clean any graffiti from its walls.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy)

The Barbican left the Banksy mural in place and covered it with a protective acrylic sheet. In 2018, Banksy made a wood panel version of the piece, which most recently sold for $9.7 million in May 2023.

Banksy’s interpretation of Basquiat’s piece “highlights the racial and social inequities that pervaded Basquiat’s life as well as recurrent themes in his work that developed out of his real-life experience,” per the Hirshhorn’s statement.

In addition to the two paintings, the Hirshhorn exhibition will feature 20 small Basquiat artworks on paper and wood made between 1979 and 1985. Downtown 81, a film about Basquiat and his contemporaries that was released in 2000, will also be on view at the museum.

“Basquiat x Banksy” comes amid celebrations of the Hirshhorn’s 50th anniversary. The museum, which was created by Congress in the 1960s and opened in 1974, is also celebrating the milestone with “Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860-1960,” a sprawling exhibition featuring more than 200 artworks.

“Basquiat × Banksy” will be on view at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. from September 29, 2024, to October 26, 2025.

Sarah Kuta | READ MORE

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.