If you haven’t managed to score tickets to see the blockbuster Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at the Brant Foundation’s new East Village space, fear not: the private museum is releasing a new block of tickets to the sold-out show, almost doubling the number of art lovers who will be able to visit between now and when it closes on May 15.
Even before the exhibition opened to the public on March 6, the public had already snapped up all 50,000 of the free tickets. To accommodate more visitors, the foundation is expanding its daily capacity from 1,100 to 2,000 guests.
“The demand for tickets was not a huge surprise,” Allison Brant told artnet News in an email. “We knew how beloved Jean-Michel Basquiat is and that people would not want to miss an opportunity to see this many works together again, especially in the East Village.”
The exhibition is the first show in the Brant Foundation’s New York space, a former Con Edison power plant that was later the home and studio of sculptor Walter De Maria. The foundation’s founder, collector Peter Brant, purchased it in 2014 for $27 million.
The Brant Foundation’s new branch in Manhattan. Photo by Sean Keenan.
It brings together top Basquiat works from collections from around the world, many of which appeared in the artist’s recent survey show at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
Displayed here in rooms with double-height ceilings and a stunning skylight reflection pool, the paintings are surprisingly at home in such luxurious settings—and in some ways, they’re a fitting metaphor for the gentrification of the once-gritty streets of the East Village that Basquiat called home.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat.” Photos: Tom Powel Imaging, Copyright Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Courtesy The Brant Foundation.
The new block of tickets can be reserved for free on the Brant Foundation website. Anyone who signed up on the wait-list has already been given the opportunity to sign up for additional tickets.
“Jean-Michel Basquiat” is on view at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, 421 East 6th Street, March 6–May 15, 2019.