The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Banksy together for the first time. This exhibition, titled “Basquiat x Banksy,” will open on September 26, 2024 and run through October 26, 2025.
At the heart of the exhibition are Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump (1982) and Banksy’s response piece Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search (2018). Basquiat’s painting evokes a boy and dog splashing in an open fire hydrant, painted with lively greens, reds, and yellows. More than three decades later, Banky’s response features two stenciled police officers surrounding the portrait of the young boy. First painted on the Barbican Centre in London in 2017, the painting introduces a stark commentary on discrimination and authority.
“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,” museum director Melissa Chiu said in a press release. “‘Basquiat × Banksy’ will open in tandem with a new, dedicated classroom and free art-education program that invites visitors to understand, through creative participation, that they too are artists.”
Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump is part of Basquiat’s infamous “Modena Paintings” series. He traveled to Modena, Italy in 1982 to create eight paintings for a show that never happened. These works, including Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, were brought together for the first time at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel in 2023.
“Basquiat x Banksy” also includes 20 smaller works by Basquiat, created between 1979 and 1985. Elsewhere, the museum will screen Downtown 81, a film shot in 1980–81 that came out in 2000. The movie depicts Manhattan’s avant-garde scene in the 1980s with Basquiat as a young artist.
This dual exhibition is not the only one to pair an influential 20th-century artist with a major contemporary street art name. It coincides with the “KAWS + Warhol” exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. This exhibition, running until January 20, 2025, puts recent work by KAWS in conversation with Andy Warhol’s entire body of work.
