Artist Bio Sponsorship Location steel On view through 2005 Battery Park City Liberty Street at South End Avenue

Keith Haring conceived Acrobats one year after the first exhibition of his free-standing steel pieces at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1985. Depicting two figures balanced in a remarkable gravity-defying pose, Acrobats is a work of incredible simplicity and vitality. Haring, a quintessentially urban artist, always sought to engage the public directly, from his earliest chalk drawings in New York subway stations to his final mural in a maternity hospital in Monte Carlo. In its temporary home in Battery Park City, Acrobats continues Haring's enduring vision of inserting art into the environs of our everyday lives. Artist Bio Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. In 1978 Haring moved to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts. In 1980 he took up Graffiti Art, decorating advertisements in New York subways with his marker pen. He worked in a number of different media including sculpture, posters, and painting, always incorporating his own distinctive, brightly-colored palette. As his art became more prominent in galleries and museums, he decided to make his work available to a broader audience by opening a Pop Shop in New York in 1986, and another in Tokyo in 1988. Through these shops he was able to sell Haring T-shirts, buttons, patches, magnets, and toys. Haring's last solo show was at Gallery 121 in Antwerp (1989). Since his death in 1990, his work has been shown in the group shows Retrospective, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1997) and Sex Show, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (2002). Sponsorship Keith Haring's Acrobats at Battery Park City is a collaboration between the Public Art Fund, the Keith Haring Foundation, and the Battery Park City Authority. Special thanks to Deitch Projects, New York. About the Keith Haring Foundation The Keith Haring Foundation was established in 1989, one year before Haring's death at age 31. The Foundation supports AIDS-related and children's charities, and maintains the largest repository of materials on Keith Haring. In collaboration with museums, galleries, publishers and art education programmers worldwide, the Foundation is able to provide information and artwork to the public that might otherwise remain unexplored in archives. www.haring.com. About the Battery Park City Authority The Battery Park City Authority is a public benefit corporation established by the state legislature in 1968 to develop and manage 92 acres of land at the southern tip of Manhattan across from the World Trade Center site. Battery Park City is home to the world renowned Winter Garden, the Irish Hunger Memorial, and the NYC Police Memorial. The Authority received the 2002 Doris Freedman Award for excellence in public art. www.batteryparkcity.org. Location Keith Haring's Acrobats is located at Liberty Street and South End Avenue. Nearest subways: R, W to Cortland Street; 4, 5 to Fulton Street. I absolutely love this artist. He has some several public art pieces, performance pieces , paintings and sculpture. Teresa Neal