More than a brief escape into the curvy, colorful, queer and socially conscious world of one of America’s preeminent pop-art icons, this Haring show highlights his relationship with Iowa City throughout the 1980s. The centerpiece of the gallery — and the relationship, you might say — is A Book Full of Fun, a mural Haring painted directly onto the library wall inside Ernest Horn Elementary School in Iowa City.
The donated mural was created on Haring’s second visit to town in 1989. The first visit was in 1984 for a three-day residency that saw the 24-year-old graffiti master meet and mentor art enthusiasts at Horn, the University of Iowa and within the Iowa City community.
It all began with a postcard sent to Haring by Horn art teacher Colleen Ernst, best known to her students as “Dr. Art.” Over the years, Ernst’s fifth and sixth graders exchanged letters with the New York-based artist, many of which are on display in the Stanley gallery. On May 22, 1989, Haring returned to Iowa City to paint A Book Full of Fun; photos in the exhibit show Haring at every stage of the process, watched on by Horn students. A roughly 15-minute video looping on the gallery wall features interviews with locals who met Haring, offering further insight into that historic day.
Also in 1989, Haring painted a famous piece of protest art called Ignorance=Fear, Silence=Death, a commentary on the HIV/AIDS crisis. That iconic work, on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation, is part of the Stanley’s exhibit as well. After years of advocacy for AIDS victims, Haring was diagnosed himself in the fall of 1988, and died of complications from the disease on Feb. 16, 1990 at just 31 years of age.
When renovations began on Horn’s library at the end of last year, A Book Full of Fun was removed from the school for the first time and transported to the Stanley. This required the removal of a cement wall, intact, to which the mural is inextricably fused. At the end of the exhibition in January 2025, the wall will return to Horn for display.
The Stanley is one of 14 stops on the Iowa City Downtown District’s 2024 Summer Gallery Walk, which kicks off this Friday. Visitors can enjoy snacks, a cash bar and live music from Melanie Landsittel in the lobby. The first 10 visitors to get their Gallery Walk cards punched at the welcome desk will also receive a free, exclusive Keith Haring button.
Here’s an early glimpse of the exhibit:
A sign on Burlington Street advertises the UI Stanley Museum of Art’s 2024 Keith Haring exhibit. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageThe Stanley Museum’s exhibit “To My Friends at Horn: Keith Haring in Iowa City” opened May 4, 2024 and will remain open through Jan. 7, 2025. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageThe Haring exhibit includes a 12-minute video about the Horn mural (left) and timeline of events related to Haring’s career and relationship to Iowa City (right). — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageWith this exhibit, Keith Haring’s 1989 mural ‘A Book Full of Fun’ appears for the first time outside the walls of Horn Elementary School. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageBringing Haring’s Horn mural to the Stanley involved removing a chunk of the elementary school library’s wall—only possible because of ongoing renovations at Horn. The mural will eventually return to the school. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageArtifacts provided by Horn, the Keith Haring Foundation, UI Special Collections, and more shed light on Haring’s relationship with Iowa City, from his lectures at the university to his penpal letters back and forth with Horn art teacher Colleen Ernst and her classes. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageDozens of photos courtesy of Horn Elementary School and retired teacher Colleen Ernst take museum-goers back to 1989, when Keith Haring conceptualized and painted an original mural among the students and their favorite books. — Emma McClatchey/Little Village‘Totem’ (1988), a painted plywood piece carved using a router and on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation in New York. “Totems are ritual objects associated with kinship, and in Haring’s hands these stacked compositions condense references to Christian imagery, non-Western iconography, and dance,” Stanley’s label explains. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageThis untitled acrylic painting on a canvas tarp (on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation) is one example of Haring using the industrial material as a canvas. “Haring created this painting in Iowa City’s Old Capitol Center on March 27, 1984, as the Johnson County Landmark jazz ensemble performed,” according to the Stanley’s label. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageThe exhibit includes a pair of red chairs and a shelf of children’s books touching on Keith Haring’s legacy. On this same wall is Haring’s iconic AIDS awareness painting “Ignorance=Fear, Silence=Death,” on loan from the Keith Haring Foundation, painted the same year as the Horn mural, 1989. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageThe Haring exhibit includes a timeline of events related to Haring’s career and relationship to Iowa City. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageThe Stanley Museum’s exhibit “To My Friends at Horn: Keith Haring in Iowa City” opened May 4, 2024 and will remain open through Jan. 7, 2025. — Emma McClatchey/Little VillageA button and card (‘Ignorance=Fear, Silence=Death’) for sale in the museum lobby as souvenirs of the Haring exhibit. — Emma McClatchey/Little Village
