iMuseo di Roma (Palazzo Braschi) · Parione
Over 140 works by Keith Haring, including Subway Drawings, 1984 FDR Drive panels, prints, posters and sculptures, with loans from the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection.
In 1984 Haring painted a mural along the base of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni steps while passers-by watched. It was scrubbed off in 1992, so the show opens with photographs of it. The Yamaha motorcycle he painted on the same Rome trip is here too.
Then you walk into a New York subway station: tiled walls, train sounds and the chalk drawings he made on empty black ad panels. It's also the closest Piazza Navona gets to a metro stop. Over 140 works, most lent by the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection, fill 12 themed rooms: political posters like Free South Africa and Safe Sex!, a music room with records and a playlist, fluorescent works under black light, and a bronze altarpiece from his last year, set in the palace chapel.
Eroica Fenice, at the press preview, came away with a Haring far more complex than the T-shirt version. Tickets are €17 (reduced €15), last entry 18:00, closed Mondays; the entrance is on Piazza San Pantaleo.
The subway room
Tiled walls and train sounds turn the palace into a New York station, hung with the white chalk drawings Haring made on unused black ad panels between 1980 and 1985.
The FDR Drive panels
Seven of the thirty panels from the mural he spray-painted along Manhattan's FDR Drive in 1984.
The Roman Yamaha
A motorcycle Haring covered in his own marks while he was in Rome in 1984.
The Luna Luna carousel model
A model of the carousel he designed for the 1987 Luna Luna amusement park, with seats shaped like his characters.
Altarpiece: The Life of Christ
A bronze altarpiece from his final year, installed in the palace chapel exactly where an altarpiece would stand.
Under-6s go free, a family ticket is €22 for two adults with under-18s (phone 060608 or the desk only), and there's a kids' audio guide by QR code, so bring headphones. Some rooms deal frankly with sex and AIDS.