Date: Thursday, May 28, 6PM
Locaiton: Elaine L. Jacob Gallery (Old Main)

The Elaine L. Jacob Gallery and College of Fine, Performing, and Communication Arts, Wayne State University, is pleased to host Keith Haring: Cranbrook & Beyond, a lecture by Andrew Satake Blauvelt, Director of Cranbrook Art Museum and Kat Goffnett, Associate Curator at Cranbrook Art Museum. The lecture will occur on Thursday, May 28 at 6PM in the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, WSU.

Keith Haring: Cranbrook & Beyond looks at the work and life of the renowned artist with a focus on his time on the campus of Cranbrook Educational Community. In 1987, Haring was commissioned to paint a temporary mural in a gallery of Cranbrook Art Museum. While on campus, he also collaborated with Cranbrook Schools students and presented a robust lecture on his life and work – including the Subway Drawings – for Cranbrook Academy of Art students and museum patrons. In Cranbrook & Beyond, Andrew Satake Blauvelt and Kat Goffnett will utilize Haring’s time on the campus to discuss different facets of the artist’s life and career, including his stylistic shifts over time, influenced by his social circle, politics, and his AIDS diagnosis which is said to have had a profound effect on the iconography of the Cranbrook mural.

This lecture is in coordination with UNDERGROUND – Keith Haring: Subway Drawings, at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery from April 17 through August 15, 2026.

Underground features 25 subway drawings created by Keith Haring from 1980-1985 in the New York City subway system. The works offer a glimpse of Haring’s graphic style and the development of his own visual language through line, patterns, symbols and semiotics that became iconic and recognizable due to its repetitious nature. The drawings were created to extend the experience and enjoyment of art to the wider public.Haring was inspired by public engagement, proclaiming that “art is for everyone".

More information about the exhibition can be found at https://www.waynestategalleries.org.

Biographies

Andrew Satake Blauvelt
Andrew Satake Blauvelt has served as Director of Cranbrook Art Museum since 2015. As a curator and historian of modern and contemporary architecture, art, and design, Blauvelt has organized numerous exhibitions with and for such institutions as the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His exhibitions and publications include: Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US, co-curated with Bridget Bartal; With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook Academy of Art Since 1932; Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia; and the forthcoming, also with Bartal, Harry Bertoia: Void and Matter. A graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art, Blauvelt had the opportunity to work on the Keith Haring project while a design student at the Academy.

Kat Goffnett
Kat Goffnett is the Associate Curator of Collections at Cranbrook Art Museum. They earned a BA in Photography at Alma College and an MA in art history from Wayne State University with an emphasis in photography and lens-based art. Since joining the team at Cranbrook Art Museum, she has curated or cocurated a number of exhibitions including With Eyes Opened: Cranbrook Academy of Art Since 1932, Homebody, Carl Toth: Reordering Fictions, Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters, and the current exhibition, Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection.