Crypto philanthropy is emerging as a meaningful funding stream, particularly among younger and wealthier donor demographics. Photo by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In the past year, the Toledo Museum of Art received several dozen works on paper by the Pop artist Marisol, a series of black-and-white photographs by Brett Weston, two sculptures by Roxy Paine, a painting by Richard Diebenkorn, four sculptural works by Martin Puryear and a linoleum-cut print by Kara Walker, among other artworks. Most donations to the museum, of course, came in the form of cash—such as the gift from one local family that funded free parking for visitors for 10 years—but not all. Other gifts included shares in startup businesses (a pharmaceutical and a tech company among them), an estate and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Solana, and others.
“There is a lot of flexibility in the kinds of donations we will accept,” Adam Levine, the museum’s director, told Observer. The museum’s board determines the types of gifts the institution will accept, and it becomes the development department’s job to figure out what to do with donations that aren’t artworks or cash. “We don’t have people on staff with expertise in real estate and crypto and startup companies,” he said, adding that the museum can “accept a variety of things, generally liquidating them immediately.”
The estate, for instance, was turned over to realtors who sold the house and property for $800,000, while the crypto was deposited in an account at The Giving Block, a Pennsylvania-based platform that helps nonprofits convert cryptocurrency donations into usable cash. The Toledo Museum of Art began accepting crypto in 2023, with donations amounting to more than $100,000 in 2025, “and that amount has been growing every year,” Levine said.
A growing percentage of gifts to museums arrive in the form of “real estate, pension plans, life insurance payouts, boats, cars, crypto—you name it,” said Ken Cerini, managing partner of Cerini & Associates, which helps not-for-profit groups value and make use of non-cash donations. “I tell people who want to donate crypto to a nonprofit to reach out to the organization to see if they will take it. Most organizations will find a way to make it happen, particularly if it will be a sizeable donation.”
Among high-profile museums that accept non-cash donations are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which accepts cryptocurrency; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which accepts appreciated securities; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which accepts real estate. All three, along with others such as the Guggenheim, accept donations of stock.
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, according to a spokesperson, accepts stock (“several times each month”) and real estate (“that’s a bit more rare”), as well as wine donations from winemakers for its annual wine auction. “But at this time we don’t accept Bitcoin,” the spokesperson added. As one might expect, the online-only Museum of Crypto Art does.
Receiving a crypto or other non-cash donation requires more than simply deciding to accept it. The Giving Block, a crypto fundraising platform, works with close to 30 museums and cultural institutions across the U.S., including the Smithsonian Institution and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Over $1.2 million in crypto was donated to museums and cultural institutions in 2025—a nearly 50 percent increase from 2024. “When a crypto donation is received, we instantly convert the crypto to U.S. dollars to capture the full donation value and then send the U.S. dollars directly to the organization’s bank account,” a spokesperson told Observer. Unsurprisingly, crypto donors tend to “skew younger than traditional major donors”—millennials and younger Gen X—“but they also tend to be meaningfully wealthier than the average online donor.”
Making non-cash gifts offers tax benefits to donors, Cerini said, noting that “with the uptick in the stock market and cryptocurrencies realizing significant gains, there is real value in the donation of these assets, as donors get the benefit of a charitable contribution for the fair market value of the asset” without having to sell it and incur capital gains tax.
Chris Haydon, founder of Crypto Appraisal Pro, which provides IRS-compliant appraisals for cryptocurrency donations, stated that more than 70 percent of the top charities in the U.S., as ranked by Forbes, accept cryptocurrency donations. “That’s up from just 12 percent in 2020.” Donations of crypto have more than tripled in the past year, driven by the fact that cryptocurrencies have “created enormous wealth. Bitcoin alone has gone from under $1,000 in 2017 to over $90,000 today. Early holders are sitting on massive unrealized gains.” He added that “five years ago, accepting crypto was a novelty. Today, for major charities, universities and hospitals, it’s becoming standard practice.”
As with any other non-cash charitable donation—such as artwork or an antique—donors may receive a tax deduction (usually 30 percent of the item’s fair market value) if the asset has been held for more than one year, with the value assessed at the time of the gift. According to IRS rules, if the charitable contribution deduction claimed exceeds $5,000, a qualified appraisal is required.
Finding an appraiser with crypto expertise who is qualified to submit an IRS-compliant valuation is not easy. None of the members of the two largest appraiser associations—the Appraisers Association of America and the American Society of Appraisers—list crypto as a specialty. While some nonprofit staff may suggest a name, most follow Adam Levine’s policy: “We don’t recommend appraisers for art or crypto or anything. That’s something for the donors to take care of… we don’t want to get embroiled with the IRS.”
Linda Selvin, executive director of the Appraisers Association of America, recommends seeking out individuals identified as “business appraisers” to conduct qualified crypto appraisals. Some companies that offer appraisal services for non-cash assets include Charitable Solutions, Havenwood Holdings, AppraiseItNow.com and Sickler, Tarpey & Associates. Platforms that enable crypto donations—such as The Giving Block, Dechomai and Fidelity—can also provide recommendations. Appraisal fees vary with the value of the gift: Randy Tarpey, a CPA and partner at Sickler, Tarpey & Associates, charges $120 for donations in the $5,000 range and $995 for donations above $500,000. Joe Kattan, owner of AppraiseItNow.com, said his fees range from $400 to $2,000.
Perhaps one of the defining features of crypto is its volatility, rising and falling in value rapidly since—unlike the U.S. dollar—it is not pegged to other currencies or backed by a central bank. Still, Haydon argued, “crypto is easier to appraise than art or collectibles. With a Picasso or a rare antique, you’re making subjective judgments about condition, provenance and comparable sales that may be years apart. With Bitcoin or Ethereum, you have transparent, real-time pricing market data across multiple exchanges, 24 hours a day. The asset’s value at any given moment is publicly verifiable.” CNBC provides daily pricing data for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies; no one can tell you what that Picasso is worth today versus tomorrow.
When it comes to gifts for art lovers, wrapping original art is the ultimate power move. But here’s the catch: collectors pour their hearts—and usually their bank accounts—into curating deeply personal collections. If you know your giftee very, very well, a piece of art can be a very, very good gift. You could also treat the collector in your life to a gallery outing or surprise them with a session with an art advisor. But if adding to their collection feels too ambitious, there are plenty of artsy presents for everyone on your list, from the absolute obsessive to the casually cultured. Whether you’re working with a shoestring budget or aiming for extravagance, there’s no shortage of options that are thoughtful, stylish and primed to impress. Enjoy our guide to the gifts guaranteed to thrill any art enthusiast.
An innovative exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art showcases everyday objects — Post-it notes, hairdryers and more — that revolutionized materials, shattered conventions and reshaped design forever. Senior curator Paola Antonelli joins to discuss.
According to Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, the digital art we make today has a long lineage dating back to the 1950s. Tezos Foundation
As the world becomes increasingly digital and technologically integrated, it is harder than ever to draw clear boundaries between analog and digital experiences. Technology is now deeply woven into how we express, communicate, share and process information and ideas, making it nearly impossible to find contemporary art completely untouched by digital tools or platforms. Artists working in traditional media inevitably engage with the digital realm in some capacity—even if only as a platform for sharing or a source of inspiration for works created in more conventional formats.
For this reason, the term digital art can be confusing. Some interpret it broadly to include any work shaped by technology, while others reserve it for “digital-native” practices created entirely within the digital space.
To explore this evolving landscape, Observer spoke with Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, who has worked in the Web3 art space for nearly a decade and now serves as head of Arts at TriliTech, the team behind the Tezos Art Foundation. Artamonovskaja shared her perspective on the current state of digital art, its market and the broader ways technology and digital platforms are reshaping how art is produced and circulated.
“You have both professionals in the broader creative economy or artists whose works are exhibited in traditional institutions such as museums, falling into this category,” she tells Observer. Still, there are some defining parameters. “To me, digital art is a form that relies fundamentally on digital technology, not just the tools, but the medium itself, as the product or the process. Digital art allows experimentation across various areas, such as lighting, texture, movement and interactivity, that traditional media can’t always convey. It’s not just about using a screen as a canvas, but often reinventing what the idea of a ‘canvas’ even means.”
Tezos began actively engaging with the digital art world in 2021. Artists and collectors on NFT platforms like Hic et Nunc, Objkt, and fx(hash) adopted the blockchain for minting and selling works, quickly making it a hub for digital, generative and experimental art.
Established around the same time, the Tezos Foundation formalized its support for digital art soon after, launching major initiatives between late 2021 and early 2022. Since then, it has evolved into an artist-first hub within the Web3 ecosystem. Through high-profile partnerships with institutions like MoMA and Art Basel, it is positioning itself as a vital conduit for Web3 creativity.
Since Artamonovskaja was appointed head of arts at TriliTech in 2024, she has played a central role in ensuring that the Tezos ecosystem maintains an artist-first framework. Priorities like sustainability, affordability and inclusivity are amplified through programming that raises global awareness of digital art while empowering existing talent with meaningful opportunities for growth.
Sabato Visconti, barbie~world~breakdown, 2024. At the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of its partnership with the Tezos Foundation. Photo: Thanassi Karageorgiou. Courtesy of MoMI
“Marketplaces on Tezos like objkt, along with high-profile partnerships with the Museum of the Moving Image, Serpentine, ArtScience Museum and others, help contextualise digital art within broader cultural landscapes,” Artamonovskaja says. She sees contextualization as fundamental to supporting the appreciation and institutionalization of a newly established field like digital art. “Our current programs also encompass a range of activities, including residencies, publications, and exhibitions, nurturing a creative environment that fosters artists’ career trajectories.” One major upcoming initiative she previewed is Tezos’ second participation at Paris Photo, in partnership with Paris-based Artverse gallery, where curator Grida Jang Hyewon will present a group booth featuring work by six artists who originate from, or are deeply shaped by, Asian cultures.
Fostering awareness of these tools and technologies is another key priority. “The Tezos Foundation has supported several educational projects, including WAC Lab, which taught professionals from cultural institutions about Blockchain best practices, as well as artist onboarding programs, such as Newtro, a program focusing on Latin American artists,” Artamonovskaja says. “Through these ongoing initiatives and upcoming projects, it’s no surprise that the Tezos ecosystem serves some of the most respected voices in the digital art space, including bitforms gallery, the Second Guess curatorial collective and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.”
Just as importantly, Tezos has helped connect and map a decades-long history of relationships between artists and digital media, beginning with early net art and extending back to Nam June Paik’s pioneering inquiry into media and technology as a form of expression. As Artamonovskaja explains, the history of digital art runs from the algorithmic plotter works of Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnár, to Alan Rath’s kinetic sculptures fusing electronics with movement, to Paik’s groundbreaking video art, and to the browser-based experiments of 1990s net artists like Cory Arcangel and Olia Lialina. “Each era redefined what it meant to create and experience art in dialogue with new technologies, shifting from producing singular digital images to building works that exist natively within global networks. I’ve always been fascinated by how forward-thinking some of the artists were. Seeing Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway in person, its glowing map of America alive with moving images, makes you reflect on how foretelling his vision was to today’s hyperconnected, media-saturated world.”
The “Paintboxed Tezos World Tour” exhibition at Digital Art Mile, Basel, 2025. Courtesy Tezos Foundation
The Paintboxed Tezos World Tour paid tribute to this long history, spotlighting the heritage of the Quantel Paintbox—the legendary 1980s commercial computer designed for artists and famously used by David Hockney and Keith Haring. “The digital art we make today most certainly belongs to a long lineage dating back to the 1950s, with interactive systems, initiatives such as E.A.T. and tools like the Quantel Paintbox,” Artamonovskaja points out.
In the past year, the Paintboxed Tezos World Tour has appeared at major art events in Miami, Paris and New York, culminating in a pivotal exhibition at the Digital Art Mile in Basel. The Basel presentation was accompanied by a catalogue of works produced by early pioneers such as David Hockney and Kim Mannes-Abbott—among the first to experiment with the tool—alongside a younger generation of artists like Simon Denny, Coldie and Gretchen Andrew. “Recognizing these histories enriches our understanding and positions Web3 art not as a fleeting trend but as a continuation of decades of creative innovation,” Artamonovskaja says.
She recalls first encountering Olia Lialina’s work in person at her presentation during Rhizome’s 7×7 conference in 2017, an experience that left a lasting impression. “What struck me most was not only her early, both critical and playful approach to the browser as a canvas, but also the nuanced commentary on the word ‘technology,’” she recalls, noting how the artist was vocal in her criticism of how the term had been overused to the point of losing specificity. “This reminded me how in the 1990s, ‘technology’ in an art context often meant something tangible, visible and experimental. In contrast, today it’s so embedded in our lives that we rarely stop to question it, and by doing so, in a way, we lose our power. The work and reflections of early net art artists often underscore the importance of maintaining that spirit of inquiry.”
Creative freedom and new audiences
For Artamonovskaja, the digital realm opens vast possibilities: dynamic experimentation, global reach and direct control. Over the past decade, she notes, social media has reshaped the artist’s role—shifting it away from reliance on galleries and institutions toward a more direct relationship with audiences. “Some artists have become their own marketers, community builders and storytellers, shaping not only how their work is seen but also how it’s valued,” she says. “This shift didn’t just change the market side of art; it influenced the medium itself. Many artists, including those working in traditional media, have begun creating works either conceived for the screen or engaging with it from a conceptual or critical perspective, responding to its formats, visual rhythms and narratives, while reflecting on how these elements shape our ways of seeing and experiencing art.”
The rise of blockchain and NFTs has taken this further by adding new layers of transaction and interactivity. “Within the Tezos ecosystem, for example, sales platforms like objkt.com have nurtured their own curatorial voices and collector bases,” she explains. “At the same time, through our ongoing initiatives like Tezos Foundation-supported open calls, residency programs and partnerships with leaders such as Art Basel and Musée d’Orsay, we’ve created new success structures for artists.” Fully harnessing this potential means embracing both creative and structural possibilities—whether by experimenting with digital-native forms, exploring interactive or generative elements, or engaging with blockchain-native ecosystems to connect with communities and shape how their work is experienced, owned and valued.
Rodell Warner, World Is Turning, 2024. At the Museum of the Moving Image, New York, as part of its partnership with the Tezos Foundation. Photo: Thanassi Karageorgiou. Courtesy of MoMI
The importance of context in curating digital art
Context, Artamonovskaja stresses, is just as important for digital art as for any other medium when it comes to establishing value and recognition. Digital art curation—including art on the blockchain—has evolved rapidly over the past several years, she notes. Having worked in the digital art space for nearly a decade, longer than many of her contemporaries, she has witnessed these shifts firsthand. “It may not seem like a significant amount of time in the grand scheme of things, but in the Web3 world, everything is accelerated,” she observes. “The COVID-19 pandemic forced the traditional art world to embrace virtual environments en masse. In blockchain and digitally-native art, these technological advancements that reshape how the audience interacts and experiences the work happen every few months.”
For this reason, curating digital art already extends far beyond simply displaying work—it is about building trust and transparency with both artists and viewers. “Given the size of the digital art market and its novelty, the curator’s role is often also that of an art dealer helping artists position their work, connecting them with the right collectors and helping them navigate the commercial and technical aspects of selling digital art in a rapidly evolving environment,” she clarifies.
“In many ways, the Web3 market functions as an accelerated mirror to the traditional art world—compressing the cycles of creation, curation, sales and audience engagement into days or weeks instead of months or years,” she continues, noting that this might not apply to every project but that, over time, it makes the discovery of emerging talent more accessible. “The same dynamics of representation and influence exist, but blockchain-enabled provenance, global marketplaces and always-on communities make the process faster, more transparent and oftentimes more efficient.”
Aleksandra Artamonovskaja with a work by Jenni Pasanen. Courtesy Tezos Foundation
Artamonovskaja acknowledges that whether this acceleration is good or bad for artists and the market is still open to debate, but she sees one undeniable advantage: the ability to engage new audiences.
Challenges in collecting and preserving digital art
In May 2022, the Tezos Foundation unveiled its Permanent Art Collection (PAC), curated by Misan Harriman, as its first official high-profile program dedicated to celebrating and elevating digital art created within its ecosystem. This marked the beginning of an ongoing commitment to showcase and acquire works by diverse, emerging artists.
Artamonovskaja has been collecting digital art and NFTs for years. When asked about her criteria for identifying a significant work worth collecting, she says it often comes down to whether the piece moves her or signals that the artist is bringing a fresh perspective to her areas of interest. “Factors such as strong artistic vision, thoughtful use of technology and meaningful cultural context are also incredibly important,” she explains. “Novelty—both conceptual and visual—plays a significant role.” This is a defining feature on sales platforms like objkt, which frequently highlight advanced interactive pieces ranging from minimalist HTML sketches to fully immersive browser-based games and on-chain data experiments. Other platforms, such as EditArt or InfiniteInk, enable interactive co-creation and dynamic experiences.
“As someone who collects the art they love, I find that the resonance within the wider ecosystem often plays a big role,” Artamonovskaja says. “Given that the market was born under the premise that there are no more gatekeepers and each artist can represent themselves, an artist’s approach to self-representation can be as important as how a gallery typically represents its artists.” Today, a community of artists exists with varied definitions of success, some prioritizing reach and community growth over traditional markers of recognition. “Perhaps this is where comparing art on the blockchain to traditional markets is a fallacy.”
Collecting digital art also raises new questions around preservation and conservation, as these works often depend entirely on the technologies through which they are created, circulated, displayed and stored. Preservation begins with recognizing that it’s not just about maintaining the still or moving image as we see it on a platform or as we right-click save it. “If we care about the work’s association with a blockchain, we need to maintain a relationship between the smart contract and the output,” she explains. “We need to care about whether the work has an archival file, a higher resolution exhibition copy, or just the web copy we see in front of us. We also want to safeguard the metadata and the environments in which the work is intended to reside.”
She notes that ensuring a worthwhile chain of documented provenance for blockchain-registered art requires active collaboration between artists, technologists, archivists and node operators. For a work to remain tied to a chain, archival advocates and conservation specialists may need to preserve not only the piece but also its operational context.
Across blockchains, one of the most significant risks in recent years has been the shutdown of marketplaces. “In such instances, it was either the core team’s efforts or the community that preserved the works, ensuring they remained accessible as intended,” Artamonovskaja points out, emphasizing that this was possible only thanks to open-source access and the benefits of decentralization.
On Tezos, for example, every artwork collected on objkt is stored on IPFS, a decentralized network designed for long-term preservation. The team ensures that each asset is pinned and remains accessible, with safeguards in place so that even if the platform were to go offline, the art would remain secure. “Tezos provides a reliable and future-proof foundation for building digital art collections,” Artamonovskaja emphasizes.
Another advantage of NFTs on Tezos is that its self-amending blockchain and formal on-chain governance make contentious hard forks far less likely than on other chains, reducing the risk of the same NFT appearing on two separate blockchains. “Because protocol upgrades are proposed, voted on and activated within the blockchain itself, NFTs remain recorded on a single chain that all participants continue to use.”
When it comes to conversations about technology, the biggest elephant in the room is the A.I. revolution, which is reshaping nearly every aspect of our lives—and, in turn, how artists approach their work and creative process. Increasingly, artists admit to using A.I. not only to refine work but also to brainstorm or seek feedback. This has sparked ongoing debate about the role of A.I. in the creative process—as a tool, an assistant or even a collaborator.
Asked about the opportunities A.I. presents for the art world and the risks it poses, particularly for digital art, Artamonovskaja is convinced that if it is approached as an instrument, it can help extend an artist’s vision. Its value, she argues, depends on how intentionally it is applied—whether to streamline workflow, unlock new aesthetic possibilities, or enable experiments that would be impossible through traditional means.
“Artists like Dr. Elgammal have even credited A.I. as their creative partner. Ultimately, art is subjective, so the idea of improving it is hard to define,” Artamonovskaja considers. “For some creators, A.I. is integrated on a deeper technical level—artists like Ivona Tau or Mario Klingemann write their own systems, shaping the algorithm as much as they shape the final product. Other artists, such as Trevor Paglen or Kevin Abosch, engage with A.I. from a critical standpoint, using it to question the technology’s politics, biases and social implications.”
At the same time, she warns of potential risks: diluting authorship, amplifying biases embedded in training data or reducing the artist’s role to that of a passive editor rather than an active creator. In 2021, she collaborated with Mike Tyka to release his renowned Portraits of Imaginary People on the blockchain, a project that delved directly into these themes. By training GANs on thousands of Flickr images, Tyka generated faces of people who do not exist, exposing how A.I. systems can reproduce and amplify identity biases. “His approach challenged notions of authenticity and sparked dialogue about technology’s influence on representation and trust,” she notes.
With the arrival of more sophisticated tools in recent years, Artamonovskaja observes that the market is still struggling to understand and value generative artistic practices. “For me, the most compelling A.I. art is not simply about the image produced, but about the relationship between human intention and machine capability, and the conceptual story that emerges from that relationship,” she reflects, emphasizing again that it is not about the medium itself but the critical and creative approach to it—the inquiry into its potential—that transforms a work of art into a tool for better understanding, or even anticipating, the broader sociological, anthropological and political implications of these new technologies in our existence.
Keith Haring, Untitled (Breakdancers and Barking Dog), 1985. Courtesy of Sotheby’s
As the November marquee auction season approaches and the major auction houses start to build momentum by revealing their top lots, the search for who has consigned what and why begins. Provenance, as we know, can play a big part in establishing and validating an artwork’s value, whether by sparking renewed interest, providing reassurance to buyers or adding art historical context. Sotheby’s, for its part, just announced that a group of thirty-one rare Keith Haring subway drawings will star in the Contemporary Day Sale on November 21 with a combined estimate of between $6.3 and $9 million. This is a very exciting moment for Haring’s collectors as none of these works have ever been offered at auction before, and it’s very difficult to find the originals in such well-preserved condition.
Haring came from a family of modest means in Pennsylvania. His father was an amateur cartoonist who, from his early years, encouraged Keith to invent his own characters. Haring’s talent for drawing led to his receiving a scholarship to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he studied semiotics, but it was his contact with the copious street art that was everywhere in 1980s New York that inspired him most.
Haring started drawing in the subway just as a hobby while en route to work: noticing that the MTA covered unpaid advertisements with black matte paper, he began scrawling his inventive visual language on them in white chalk. In short order, his unique and highly recognizable style attracted his first fans. Nonetheless, Haring continued his drawings in front of the crowds and the NYPD, who ticketed and even arrested him for vandalism over the next five years. Describing them in an essay published for Art in Transit: Subway Drawings, published in 1984, he said felt that his work was “more of a responsibility than a hobby,” a way to leave a critical trace as an individual presence in a cannibalizing metropolis dominated by corporate interests and unstoppable real estate speculation and gentrification. Even when Haring’s career skyrocketed and he established himself as a leading figure in the downtown art scene, he said the subway was still his “favorite place to draw.”
During his subway project, he appropriated thousands of black panels for energetic mark-making to build an inventory of iconic images, such as his nuclear dogs, angels, flying saucers, babies, smiley faces, etc.—the motifs mostly engineered at his seminal creative haunt, Club 57. “I think the origin of the subway drawings was part of how they came about in a sense, where it was part of Keith’s DNA,” Gil Vazquez, executive director of the Keith Haring Foundation, said in a statement. “There’s a significant component of generosity. When I think of the subway drawings, I think of them as one of Keith’s first acts of activism.”
Given the nature of urban guerrilla art, most of the subway drawings have been lost or destroyed, making the ones coming to auction a true rarity for fans and institutions looking to add to their collections. Because of their importance and rarity, the works have also been included in prominent exhibitions, including the Brooklyn Museum’s 2012 critically acclaimed exhibition of Haring’s career titled “Keith Haring: 1978-1982,” which marked the last occasion the group exhibited together. Most of the works coming to auction have a long exhibition history, like Untitled (Still Alive in ’85), which is one of the final subway drawings and has been featured in many prominent exhibitions at MoMA, the Reading Public Museum in Pennsylvania, Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville in Paris, de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Rotterdam.
Behind their extraordinary survival is a passionate art collector, Larry Warsh, who has taken on stewardship of these thirty-one works for nearly 40 years, building the most exceptional and extensive assemblage of Haring’s subway drawings in private hands. Observer spoke with Wash to understand how those gems came into his collection, the importance of preserving these drawings and, more generally, what’s in his art collection today.
“I’ve been collecting Keith Haring since the mid-’80s, and collecting all kinds of artwork all along, drawings, subway drawings, even a car, anything to do with Keith that was very compulsive at the time,” Warsh told Observer. Arguably, the collector was one of the first supporters of Keith Haring, despite the fact that he doesn’t see himself as a patron in traditional terms. “I was a patron for him in supporting his creative self, what he stood for and what he did. I was not a traditional patron; I just gave money or attended all the gallery functions. I was more pure in the sense of seeing his creativity and what he was doing then. It was a different time.”
Warsh is also an art historian, having published three books about Keith Haring. When asked how he spotted Haring’s talent so early and realized that his work would have historical relevance, he demures. “First of all, it was him, as a creative being and a person. Wherever he drew as artwork, his energy and translation of symbols and signs were unique, and most people would feel comfortable looking at his art. It was art for everyone. He made art for everybody, and he was a generous person and cared about people; he cared about causes; he cared about kids.”
Those subway drawings were part of his tridimensional works—Warsh is currently writing a book on this—and link him to the notion of the Duchampian ready-made, bringing it to a more democratic and public level by appropriating elements in urban spaces. “He was a student of the immediate art act in drawing and painting on objects like Duchamp, so these are considered like found objects.”
While he sometimes tried to get them directly from the subway, Warsh admitted that peeling them out proved difficult, so he just started to find and buy them compulsively. “I basically hunted them down and tried to accumulate them as a body of work,” he said. “It was not about commerciality. It’s about historical importance. My feeling was that these were historically important.” For the same reason, he also started buying Basquiat’s notebooks, being one of the first to acknowledge the historical importance of those texts. Today, he also has the most extensive collection of them. “It’s not the commercial goal that propelled me into collecting. It was the manic, compulsive accumulation personality that I had for many, many years.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Warsh started collecting very early in his life, having been introduced to art by an uncle who was a collector of German art. However, he really got into it when he moved to downtown New York City, immersing himself fully in the art scene and the collective energy that shaped an entire community, creating the fertile ground for this entire moment of art history to happen. “I was interested in the energy of the time,” Warsh explained. “My good friend Renee Ricard used to visit me at all night hours with all kinds of things. So I learned with my eyes, and I felt with my emotions, and I had to look into the future and feel what I was collecting in the present would have value. Not just commercial value, but historical value.”
Keith Haring, Untitled (Boombox Head); est. $400,000-600,000. Courtesy of Sotheby’s
When asked why he wanted to part with them, Warsh said that he wanted to let them circulate and be seen again by giving the opportunity of ownership to another collector or, even better, an institution that will show them. “I think I did my job to accumulate them as the body of works,” he said. “They were shown in museums; we did a book, with one version in Mandarin. I don’t want to own much art anymore in the same way I wanted to. I’m thrilled with what I did, but at this point, it’s time for institutions to have a chance to add these drawings to their collections because they are the most important works by this artist, I believe.”
To further promote the value of this group of works, Sotheby’s is hosting an immersive exhibition of the subway drawings that will help visitors envision these works where they were initially conceived by turning the galleries into a vintage subway station with turnstiles, benches and archival footage. Warsh is excited to see what the auction house and exhibition partner Samsung (SSNLF) are cooking up, as it aligns with his desire to share Haring’s art with as many people as possible, particularly in the city. “I think New Yorkers will want to come and see this because everybody has always heard about them or seen pictures, but very few have had the chance to see these drawings in person,” he said. “Seeing them in person, seeing how fragile they are and how sensitive they are, will leave everyone amazed.” Wash concluded that he hopes the exhibition will further enhance the value of Keith Haring’s work and revive interest in it by showing its relevance as an essential part of a pivotal moment in New York’s cultural history.
Summertime is in full swing which means it’s that time of year again to press play on Lorde’s discography. From Pure Heroine to Solar Power, Lorde seems to never disappoint eager fans. It’s been 7 years since Lorde’s greatest project, Melodrama, became ours. Mega Lorde fan or not, you’ve probably heard a majority of the songs on the album and related to many. It’s about growing up, making mistakes, falling out of love with yourself and others, and finding what makes life exciting.
But, what makes Melodrama so iconic? We have to start with the cover art. It’s literally art that if we saw it walking through the MoMA, we wouldn’t think twice. The hues of blues, browns, and pinks on the cover give the songs so much life and really remind us that making timeless music, like that on Melodrama, is a true form of art.
Here are 11 iconic paintings that pair perfectly with each song on the album.
“’Cause honey I’ll come get my things, but I can’t let go/I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it/Oh, I wish I could get my things and just let go/I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it”
When thinking about lighting in famous paintings, we first thought of Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. The subtle green lights shining in front of the diner add so much dimension to the painting, just like ‘Green Light’ adds character and depth to Melodrama.
“We’re king and queen of the weekend/Ain’t a pill that could touch our rush/(But what will we do when we’re sober?)/Uh, when you dream with a fever/Bet you wish you could touch our rush/(But what will we do when we’re sober?)”
Whether you are a wine girlie or a beer girlie (or neither!) you probably recognize Bacchus by Caravaggio. This painting portrays a young Dioynusus (or Bacchus in the Roman language), the God of Wine, inviting viewers to join him for a glass of red wine. The Greeks had it pretty great, huh? If we could eat grapes from the vine under the Grecian sun all day, we would. Lorde‘s music is the closest we come to a perfect summer vacation!
Find Bacchus at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
“Might get your friend to drive, but he can hardly see/We’ll end up painted on the road, red and chrome/All the broken glass sparkling/I guess we’re partying”
When we listen to ‘Homemade Dynamite’ we envision a room up in flames (metaphorically or literally) either because the music is just that good or because of a different reason. For this reason, we paired the third track on the album with The Burning of the Houses of Parliament by J.M.W Turner and William Turner. Turner’s painting mixes beautiful hues of red and orange that almost make the viewer feel calm amid the chaos. This mirrors how we feel when we listen to Melodrama.
Find The Burning of the Houses of Parliament at The Tate in London, United Kingdom.
“Our thing progresses/I call and you come through/Blow all my friendships/To sit in hell with you/But we’re the greatest/They’ll hang us in the Louvre/Down the back, but who cares—still the Louvre”
This is one of our favorite, if not our number one, track on the album. Blasting this song on full volume makes us want to run down the miles and miles of halls in The Louvre with our besties and Lorde herself. Naturally, we went with the most famous painting housed in The Louvre, The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.
Find The Mona Lisa at The Louvre in Paris, France.
“They say, “You’re a little much for me/You’re a liability/You’re a little much for me”/So they pull back, make other plans/I understand, I’m a liability”
A famous painting that evokes feelings of horror, sadness, and grief is The Scream by Edward Munch. The beauty of art is that each person who views (or listens) to it, can interpret it differently. That’s how we feel about ‘Liability’ and The Scream. Some may find it beautiful, others may feel uncomfortable. How do you interpret these two pieces of art?
Find The Scream at The National Museum in Oslo, Norway.
“Hard feelings/These are what they call hard feelings of love/When the sweet words and fevers/All leave us right here in the cold-old-old/Alone with the hard feelings of love/God, I wish I believed ya/When you told me this was my home-ome-ome”
When deciding which painting to pair with ‘Hard Feelings/Loveless’ we wanted to pick something that evoked heartbreak and pain. Ophelia by John Everett Millias is stunning, yet quite painful to look at. A young woman bathed in flowers, lying in a pool of water, yet we cannot tell if she is miserable or simply full of bliss. Is this what it feels like to be “alone with the hard feelings of love?”
Find Ophelia at The Tate in London, United Kingdom.
“All the glamour and the trauma/And the f***** melodrama, whoa, whoa/All the gun fights and the lime lights/And the holy sick divine nights, whoa”
You know we couldn’t forget about the man himself, Vincent van Gogh. He’s created dozens of iconic paintings that we know very well and love today. But, have you seen The Drinkers by Vincent van Gogh? It features his same artistic flair that makes his work stand out, but also relates to the themes in ‘Sober II (Melodrama).’
Find The Drinkers at The Art Institute of Chicago.
“I am my mother’s child, I’ll love you ’til my breathing stops/I’ll love you ’til you call the cops on me/But in our darkest hours, I stumbled on a secret power/I’ll find a way to be without you, babe”
The lore behind this song cannot go without a quick mention…but, what does the song really mean to us? Writers, and creators alike, are often misunderstood but quickly become the ones to be celebrated later on in life for their accomplishments that were once taken for granted. One of our favorite paintings depicting a writer is that of Emile Zola by Edouard Manet. The scattered feather pens and messy workspace is so relatable!
Find Emile Zola at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.
“So I fall/Into continents and cars/All the stages and the stars/I turn all of it to just a supercut”
Deciding to chase a memory so far away from your mind is a hard decision to make. Whether that’s in love or in familial relationships, sometimes things happen that we wish to forget about altogether. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí reminds us of those themes. We can try our hardest to erase our memory, but it always remains persistent. The clocks draped over various objects remind us that time cannot be warped, no matter how hard we wish it to be.
Find The Persistence of Memory at the Museum of Modern Art.
“And maybe all this is the party/Maybe the tears and the highs we breathe, oh no/And maybe all this is the party/Maybe we just do it violently”
Every time we listen to this song we get quite emotional. We can never stop the tears from falling down, so we just let ourselves feel all the feels that Lorde evokes within us. To match with us, we’ve chosen Crying Girl by Roy Lichtenstein. We love the style of art that Lichtenstein took with this painting and hope that Lorde gains inspiration from it for future cover art!
“All of the things we’re taking/‘Cause we are young and we’re ashamed/Send us to perfect places/All of our heroes fading/Now I can’t stand to be alone/Let’s go to perfect places”
When we think about perfect places and perfect landscapes, we instantly think of Claude Monet. Our favorite Monet is The Artist’s Garden at Giverny. If we could escape to any place, it would be the garden portrayed here. Perfect places are full of brightly colored flowers and the serenity that nature brings. How would you paint your perfect place? Or, how would you write about it in a song?
Find The Artist’s Garden at Giverny at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France.
Image Source: Jonathan Borba | Unsplash
Which song on Melodrama is your favorite? Be sure to let us know by tweeting us at @thehoneypop or visiting us on Facebook and Instagram.
About two years ago, one of my psychiatry patients was giving me particular trouble. He had depression, and despite his usual chattiness, I just couldn’t find a way to engage him on our Zoom calls. He seemed to be avoiding eye contact and stayed quiet, giving only short answers to my questions. I worried he would drop out of treatment, so I suggested that we do something I rarely do with patients: go for a walk.
We met at a park on a brisk fall day and sat on a bench when we were done. Among the few people nearby was a group of workers, who were cleaning the grounds, chatting loudly, and obviously having fun. As I tried to ask my patient about his studies, he kept breaking eye contact with me to look at the workers. Just as we were finishing, he became tearful and said that he felt very lonely. It was the most he’d opened up to me in many months, and I was relieved. Perhaps the sight of these convivial young men was a reminder of his painful isolation that he simply couldn’t ignore. Or perhaps the act of walking together had finally made him comfortable enough to open up. Either way, it never would have happened on Zoom or in my office.
My experience with my patient runs contrary to the American fixation on attention. At work, we are lauded for displaying unbroken focus on the task at hand, while some companies punish employees for taking too many breaks away from their computer. With friends, we are expected to be active and engaged listeners, something that demands nearly constant awareness. Being hyper-focused on what people are saying and trying hard not to break your attention might seem like a way to fast-forward a friendship and make meaningful connections. But in fact, that level of intensity can make you feel less connected to other people. If you really want to nurture a relationship, shared distraction might be more powerful.
If you’ve ever defused an awkward social situation with unrelated small talk or an icebreaker game, you’re already familiar with the social benefits of distraction. Indeed, a handful of studies, while not investigating distraction per se, have suggested that engaging in a shared distracting activity, such as physical exercise, can enhance feelings of social connectedness and pleasure. This is in stark contrast to the alienating, alone-together experience of people who each engage in their own distracting activity, such as staring at their smartphone.
Although the mechanism by which distraction might increase a feeling of social connectedness is unclear, there are some plausible explanations. Engaging in physical activity, even one as gentle as walking, has been associated with a substantial increase in creative, divergent, and associative thinking—perhaps because moving takes our focus away from ourselves. Creative thinking, in turn, has the potential to move the conversation along in unpredictable ways, perhaps activating the neural reward pathways that rejoice in novelty and thereby making us delight more in one another’s presence. And moving isn’t strictly necessary for the creative benefits of distraction to occur: A 2022 study published in Nature found that just taking note of one’s environment can enhance creative thinking.
That study also found that pairs working together virtually were less likely to notice their surroundings; instead, they spent more time looking directly at each other’s images. This is decidedly not good for conversation. Staring at a social partner’s face is cognitively and emotionally exhausting, and can be a sign of a domineering nature. Just as you’ve probably experienced the social benefits of distraction, you’ve also probably noticed the social drawbacks of too much intensity. Years ago, hundreds of thousands of people, myself included, went to the Museum of Modern Art to see the Serbian conceptual artist Marina Abramović’s classic performance piece, in which she sat at a small wooden table, staring silently and impassively for several minutes at the face of any visitor who sat across from her. The encounters were uncomfortable at best, and grueling at worst. By removing nearly all ambient stimulation and props, Abramović had underscored their crucial importance.
The discomfort of extended eye contact helps explain why having natural-seeming, friendship-enforcing interactions over platforms like Zoom and FaceTime can be so difficult: They largely remove the rich world of distractions and force us to stare at the face of our social partner. But for most of us, some degree of virtual connection is unavoidable. For example, a recent Pew Research Center survey estimated that more than 30 percent of employed American adults continue to work largely by Zoom, and even more on a hybrid schedule. But we can still leverage the social advantages of distraction even when we can’t physically be with friends and loved ones.
One idea is simply to turn off your camera, and thereby remove the option of staring intently into each other’s pixelated eyes. During the height of the pandemic, I taught my residents by Zoom and became very frustrated when they switched off their video. I thought they were zoning out, but perhaps they were stretching or pacing about their apartment, getting a small dose of distraction and making their Zoom experience richer. The reason it felt annoying to me was because it was one-sided; maybe we would have had a better, more creative dialogue if we had all gone off camera together. At the other extreme, try leaving your video on and picking a conversation-starting background, or taking your conversation partner on a virtual tour of your surroundings, or playing a game together. If your friend spaces out, don’t take offense as I did. Ask them what they just saw or imagined and let the conversation flow.
When you have the luxury of face-to-face contact, skip the staring contest and get out in the world together. You’ll be surprised at the places that can nurture conversation: a lively bar, a challenging fitness class, the sidelines of a riotous parade. Shouting over the noise can be a bonding experience. But be sure you don’t pick something that’s too distracting—otherwise you’ll each be in your own bubble of experience. That happened to me a few years ago, zip-lining with my husband in the Catskill Mountains. It was fun, but ultimately an exercise of being alone together. We debriefed later.
There’s a time and place for intense, focused conversation, if not intense, focused eye contact. If your friend comes to you in a crisis, or your partner is in the middle of confessing their love, they probably won’t appreciate you pointing out the guy with his pet scarlet macaw passing by (yes, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing this a few times in New York City). But mostly, we stand to benefit when we allow a little bit of the world to intrude.
To photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, the rapidly vanishing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America were works of art. The German couple’s documentary images of transmission towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces and smokestacks – structures that signified the end of an industrial era – are being celebrated in a comprehensive retrospective now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lee Cowan offers us a tour.
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