#kawsbkm

Link arms with a loved one and head to the Museum this weekend. If you're looking for a reason, here are just a few:⁠ ⁠ 🎨 Collections, art activations, and a few reinstallations you don't want to miss⁠ ⁠🍴 The Norm is open again and perfect for your mid-gallery pitstops⁠ ⁠🌤️ Join us on Sunday from 1-5 pm for An Afternoon on Collective Care⁠ ⁠ See all that's currently on view, to learn more about Sunday's event honoring the 2-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more fun to fill your weekend.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/

Born and raised in Jersey City, KAWS (aka Brian Donnelly) started out as a graffiti writer and street artist. His early roots in the 1990s began with tagging his alias on walls, train cars, and billboards, and evolved into more pointed public interventions involving the manipulation of advertisements. After receiving a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, KAWS has shaped an artistic practice that interweaves aspects drawn from the distinctive worlds of art, popular culture, commerce, and technology, shifting how we think about cultural production and consumption. Cut to 2021, KAWS: WHAT PARTY traces KAWS’s twenty-five-year career, from his beginnings in Jersey City to his current status as a globally acclaimed artist based in Brooklyn. Learn more and plan your visit here.⁠

KAWS: WHAT PARTY is now opening February 26—and we promise it’ll be worth the wait! Our team has been hard at work, but unfortunately the pandemic has created some unavoidable delays, and we need a little more time to prepare for the opening. KAWS  is working tirelessly with our team to bring his vibrant survey to life. We have updated our opening date to ensure that our staff remains as safe as possible as we work hard installing the exhibition. We’re so grateful for your understanding, and we can’t wait for you to experience this exhibition in person—Reserve your tickets today!

Ticket holders for February 12–25 will be automatically refunded, and will also be contacted to rebook a new time to visit the exhibition. Please note refunds may take up to 14 days to process and will go to your original form of payment.

SHARE, a new monumental sculpture by KAWS, has been unveiled at Rockefeller Center! The 18-foot-tall bronze figure features two of the artist’s iconic motifs, COMPANION and BFF, and is situated in dialogue with the history and context of Rockefeller Center's storied campus. KAWS joins a group of world-renowned artists who've exhibited large-scale public artworks at Center Plaza. This presentation of SHARE is made possible with generous support from Tishman Speyer and Skarstedt Gallery.⁠⁠

CHUM, a character KAWS has used to express human relationships, emotions, and states of mind, appears here in new work created especially for KAWS: WHAT PARTY. A series of vividly hued canvases, titled URGE, focuses on CHUM’s face and gloved hands. The paintings hang together in a grid formation, each canvas its own entity but directly in conversation with its counterparts. In a new sculptural work titled SEPARATED, a seated COMPANION figure with its hands over its eyes could be seen as a reaction to the state of the world in 2020. 

Tickets are selling fast! Secure your KAWS: WHAT PARTY ticket before it closes next weekend.

“Previously, I worked with a lot of different companies, and it was always in these limited quantities. Now it seems like the climate is to do something that can reach masses and fulfill a lot of people, which I felt after my project with Uniqlo last year. You realize that there’s a lot of people who might know the work but just be completely priced out with the objects and with the art.” — KAWS

Plan your KAWS: WHAT PARTY visit!