Forgotten Keith Haring Mural From Hospital Sells To Benefit Kids’ Medical Care

In 1985, the Mount Sinai children’s hospital invited Keith Haring to come in and draw personal artworks for its young patients. What began as a simple request evolved into three visits, with the late pop artist hopping from room to room to create illustrations from his marker and notepad for his adoring little fans.

On his third visit on January 16, 1986, Haring asked Diane Rode, who was the sole art therapist at the hospital at the time, if he could dedicate a full mural to the children on the wall. The hospital was more than happy to oblige, and so work began for Mural for the Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.

Anticipated to sell for US$700,000 at the very most during Sotheby’s Contemporary Day Auction on November 17, the work ended up going for US$945,000 under the auction block.

A portion of the proceeds will go back to the children’s hospital and its partnering facilities to fund programming and clinical care.

Spanning more than 200 inches, the yellow painting features a little boy in a sports shirt, inviting the hospital’s patients to insert themselves into Haring’s narrative. The child is shown waving at a two-headed sausage dog—stretching across four parts of the artwork—which has sneakers on all 10 of its legs. A caterpillar and another figure gleefully hitch a ride on this creature.

The historical piece could have been scrapped when the hospital’s pediatrics building was demolished in 1989, in favor of a new main campus. It was a good thing an employee got sentimental and saved the wallpaper on which the mural was created, which had then remained in storage for over three decades.

“Patients filled into the hallway to watch in awe as Haring’s full-body painting process—akin to a dance or performance—was on full display,” details Sotheby’s. “As he painted, Haring was fully engaged with the children, talking to them about art: its purpose, its influence and intent, and his process to open his mind and let images flow in.”

The street artist believed that art should be accessible to all, so his authenticators at the Keith Haring Foundation are normally reluctant to have his work sold to private hands. However, they’re pleased that the proceeds from the mural’s sale will be used for good, Gil Vazquez, the executive director of the Haring Foundation, tells the New York Times.

Vazquez says the move is an extension of Haring’s “spirit of generosity.”

Rode, who is now the senior director of patient and family-centered care at the hospital, recalls how Haring showed the children the importance and power of “art, play, and imagination in humanizing healthcare,” which can be scary for anyone, let alone children, Artnet News reports.

Commenting on the piece, Nicole Schloss, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art day sale, says it is a symbol of how fond Haring was of children as well as his mission to “bring joy to the world.”

[via Artnet News and New York Times, images via various sources]