KEITH HARING'S ART CARS RETURN TO NYC FOR 9 DAYS ONLY

## A 1963 Buick Painted as a Gift. That Is Where This Starts. The Buick came first. That 1963 Buick Special is the first car that Haring ever painted, given as a gift to the architect of his iconic Soho Pop Shop, believed by collector Larry Warsh to be Moore & Pennoyer. Not a commission. Not a brand deal. A thank-you note painted over an entire automobile. By 1986, Haring created what many consider his most iconic full-size art car with that 1963 Buick Special, bringing his street language onto a classic American silhouette in a bold, graphic scheme that makes the Buick feel like a moving mural. Three years before that Buick existed, there was already a Land Rover covered in barking dogs and mushroom clouds parked at a jazz festival in Switzerland. Haring painted the Land Rover in 1983 for Switzerland's Montreux Jazz Festival. Warsh acquired the car directly from its producers. The event's name features amid the vehicle's dense tangle of symbols from Haring's semiotics-driven lexicon. Two cars. Forty-three years between the first public appearance and this moment. Nine days in the West Village. ## 5,000 Subway Drawings Were the Rehearsal. The Cars Were the Thesis. Between 1980 and 1985, Haring created over 5,000 chalk drawings on the blacked-out ad spaces along New York's subway stations, transforming empty panels into a temporary art exhibition for commuters. He was arrested. He kept going. Between 1980 and 1985, Haring produced hundreds of these public drawings, sometimes creating as many as forty in one day. The subway was a laboratory for scale and speed. The cars were proof that the logic held on a different object entirely. The cars are not side quests. They are proof of concept for his core belief that the image should live where people already are. If you pull the thread all the way through, the story is simple and radical. Haring looked at a car and saw what he always saw: a public surface with the power to meet people first. Consider what that means in practice. A Land Rover is utilitarian, almost anonymous in that setting. Haring turned it into something charged with motion even when parked, a dense skin of black line that reads like a living diagram. That is the whole theory. The canvas moves. The crowd does not have to. And then he opened the Pop Shop. In 1986, Haring opened the flagship location of his Pop Shop at 292 Lafayette Street in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, seeing it as a logical next step from his subway drawings, rooted in his desire to make art for a wide range of people, not just collectors and gallery goers. The art establishment called it selling out. Haring called it consistency. ## 16 Morton Street, a 19th-Century Carriage House, Nine Days Opening April 10, "Keith Haring: On the Street" marks the first time his painted 1963 Buick Special and 1983 Land Rover Defender will be shown together in Manhattan. Together. Never before. In the city where both canvases were conceptually born. The show is the first ever for Free Parking, a new 3,000-square-foot gallery by CART Department tucked inside a 19th-century carriage house. That detail is not incidental. A carriage house is where vehicles were always stored, hidden from public view. Free Parking is CART Department's flagship gallery and events space, located in the West Village at 16 Morton St., housed on the ground floor of a 19th-century carriage house, fitted with a functioning garage door designed from the ground up to welcome automobiles as art. The space was built for exactly this kind of moment. Both automobiles are the property of car collector Larry Warsh, whose curatorial platform, CART Department, describes itself as "a cultural platform devoted to the automobile as an artistic and social artifact," and also owns Free Parking. Warsh is not a passive custodian. He edited the book that anchors the entire exhibition. The show serves as a launch for the new book "Keith Haring in 3D," edited by Warsh and Glenn Adamson. The book is out on Phaidon April 22. The cars arrive before the book ships. That sequencing is deliberate. See the objects first. Read the scholarship after. One logistical note worth knowing: the Buick will leave for the Bentonville museum on April 14, but the Land Rover will remain on view throughout the exhibition. Four days to see both together. After that, you get one. ## The Crystal Bridges Survey Opens June 6. This Is the Preview. Spring 2026 is not a casual Haring moment. It is a coordinated reassessment. The Brant Foundation is presenting a Keith Haring exhibition, opening March 11, 2026 at the Foundation's East Village space, revisiting Haring's formative years of 1980 to 1983 and tracing his rise from the subways of New York to international fame. Following major surveys of Jean-Michel Basquiat in 2019, Andy Warhol in 2023, and Kenny Scharf in 2024, the Foundation now turns to Haring, reaffirming its dedication to preserving the history of this pivotal cultural era. The Brant is running the early-career argument. CART Department is running the three-dimensional argument. Crystal Bridges is running the full retrospective. "Keith Haring in 3D" will be on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 600 Museum Way, Bentonville, Arkansas, from June 6, 2026 through January 25, 2027. Seven months in Arkansas. Nine days in the West Village. The panels at Free Parking extend the argument beyond the cars themselves. Choreographer and downtown New Yorker Muna Tseng will share "Stories from the Street" with cultural critic Carlo McCormick on April 11. Powerhouse Arts leader Eric Shiner will link with muralist Marka27 on April 14 to discuss "When Street Art Becomes Sculpture." Warsh will explore Haring's time in New York with the artist's definitive biographer Brad Gooch on April 18. Three conversations in nine days. That is a graduate seminar schedule packed into a gallery that opens its garage doors. ## Four Vehicles Total. The Other Two Are Not Here. The 1963 Buick Special and 1971 Land Rover Defender III are two of just four cars Haring ever painted. The full roster is worth knowing. The vehicles include a 1962 SCAF/Mortarini Mini Ferrari 330 P-2, a 1963 Buick Special, a 1971 Land Rover Series III 109 Station Wagon, a 1987 Honda CBR1000F Hurricane motorcycle, and a 1991 BMW Z1. All five of these vehicles were united publicly at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles in an exhibition titled "The Unconventional Canvases of Keith Haring." That was the first time the full set appeared together. "The Unconventional Canvases of Keith Haring" was on display at the Petersen until June 4, 2017. Nearly a decade later, two of those five are back in New York. The city that made them possible, for nine days, then they disappear again into a warehouse outside the city. Haring quickly became a well-respected Pop art icon alongside the likes of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The world lost this talent to AIDS-related complications at the young age of 31 in 1990. He painted the last of his known vehicles, a BMW Z1, in 1990. The same year. The Buick heads to Bentonville on April 14. If you want to see what Haring believed about surfaces, movement, and access, you have six days from April 10 to stand in front of both of them at 16 Morton Street and decide for yourself whether the argument still holds. It does.