Confrontation: Keith Haring and Pierre Alechinsky will draw major attention in celebrating one of the most beloved figures of 20th-century American art, while simultaneously providing a means of access to one of the legends of the European avant-garde. This exhibition differentiates itself from past iterations of Haring presentations through its emphasis on showing the artist’s place within a broader historical lineage that extends to artists beyond American borders. In connecting Haring to Alechinsky and CoBrA, this presentation emphasizes the under-recognized legacy of this key experimental movement, one that eroded artistic and social barriers by bringing work into the streets and adapting non-traditional creative sources including children’s art and pre-historic visual culture in order to instigate social change.

NSU Art Museum’s collection of CoBrA art is the largest in an American museum. CoBrA – an acronym for the three capital cities in which its founding members originated: Copenhagen (Denmark), Brussels (Belgium), and Amsterdam (the Netherlands) – is the international, interdisciplinary, and collective art movement that spanned from 1948-1951.