–by Zara Korutz
Exhibition Review of “Keith Haring: In The Street” at Free Parking by CART Department, 16 Morton Street, NYC, April 10–19
Larry Warsh’s art collection is seriously legit. And now, he is openly sharing his passion, collection, and knowledge with the world. His innovative art platform CART Department is devoted to exploring how cars shape important cultural moments in time and space. “I’m interested in using cars as art canvases,” said Warsh.
Free Parking, CART Department’s flagship art gallery and events space, is located in the West Village at 16 Morton St (ironically, next to an actual garage with paid parking). Currently, the “Keith Haring: In The Street” exhibition is on show along with various programmed events, and is free to the public.
When you walk into the carriage house turned gallery space, visible on the wall is a quote by Keith Haring that sets the tone, “I was never good at quite defining what is and what is not art. I mean, eventually everything can be art if we see it like art.”
The showcase features a 1963 Buick Special and a 1971 Land Rover Series III which are covered in paintings by Keith Haring (1958-1990). Recognizable is Haring’s personal design language style aesthetic of cartoon figures, animals, babies and line motifs. His semiotic expressions are connected to concepts of birth, death, love, sex and war.
Historically, Haring’s art can be understood as part of the influential early 1980s New York Downtown Art Movement. This fringe art scene importantly progressed the value of street art and in turn, helped to legitimize Black, Latino, and Queer artists who are at the heart of graffiti and street art. Haring famously used the subway as his public art studio, an artistic laboratory space for experimenting with creative ideas. This explicit act of illegal vandalism led to his arrest.
Haring said, “More than once, I’ve been taken to a [police] station handcuffed by a cop who realized, much to his dismay, that the other cops in the precinct are my fans and were anxious to meet me and shake my hand.”
In a very real way, Haring braved the law in order to give the people of New York City his visual love poems of street art inspiring hope to the masses. Haring’s art is a call and response to the hardships and joys of life that unite us all as part of the human condition.
Haring who died of AIDS related complications in 1990 at the age of 31, was a people’s advocate addressing the social ignorance and stigma surrounding AIDS and other endemic physical and social ills that infiltrated New York City in the 1980s. Haring’s illustrations spoke directly to societies’ general heightened sense of fear and lack of compassion in the wake of devastation left from the city’s collapsing economy and crack epidemic impacting low-income, and mostly Black communities.
In 2017, Haring’s 1982 Untitled work sold in a Sotheby’s auction for $6 million setting a new auction world record for the artist, officially placing “illegal” street art within a “high” artworld value. The Buick and Land Rover currently on display at the Free Parking exhibition are two out of the four total vehicles that Haring painted in his career and are remarkably very rare.
Warsh said, “It’s very important that Keith Haring’s art continues to remain accessible to the public and not be gated in anyway.”
Thank you, Larry Warsh, for privileging NYC with the opportunity to see Keith Haring’s car artwork up close and personal. There is something magical about this moment. Go see the show, before it’s gone.
“Keith Haring: In The Street” is on view at Free Parking, 16 Morton Street, New York, April 10–19 from 12-6pm. “Keith Haring in 3D” is on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 600 Museum Way, Bentonville, Arkansas, June 6, 2026–January 25, 2027. Companion book Keith Haring in 3D published by Phaidon, to be released on April 22, 2026.
all images ©Zara Korutz
