A new exhibition charting the late Keith Haring’s (1979 Fine Arts) early career, “Keith Haring: 1978 – 1982,” opened March 16 at the Brooklyn Museum and has been getting a lot of attention in the press. “There was a time in New York when you couldn’t walk in the subway or along the sidewalk and not stumble upon Keith Haring’s artwork—those odd (and oddly amusing) posters and graffiti murals of cartoony shapes and squiggles,” Joseph Amodio wrote for Newsday about the exhibition.

When Raphaela Platow, chief curator at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, thought about organizing a Keith Haring show, she considered how to reveal a different side of the artist, knowing that his visual vocabulary and style are instantly recognizable. “He organized 30 shows in four years,” she told The Gallerist NY. “And he wrote his own press releases. They’re hilarious. Then he moved to an entire phase where he did nothing but word-based pieces.” The resulting exhibition provides some insight through 155 works on paper and more than 150 archival objects, including a selection of rarely seen videos (many produced while Haring studied at SVA), journals, subway posters, and documentary photographs. In her New York Times review, Karen Rosenberg advised, “Go, and enjoy the party. Relive the Paradise Garage, if you are old enough to have been there; celebrate the progenitor of Banksy, if you weren’t.”

“Keith Haring: 1978 – 1982” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, through July 8.

For more reviews of the exhibition, visit The Village Voice, Artdaily and New York Post.