See Keith Haring’s Famous Bathroom Mural– FREE at The Center

Look around you– art is everywhere.  It’s mounted gloriously on the white walls of the museum, in gorgeous sculpture gardens, and displayed on the refrigerators of doting parents.  And sometimes, great art is found in the crapper.  At least if you’re the legendary artist Keith Haring, who painted an awe-inducing, sexually explicit, homoerotic mural, Once Upon A Time, on the walls of the LGBT Community Center’s second floor men’s bathroom back in 1989.  The mural– which was completed just months before Haring passed away of AIDS–  was recently restored, and is now on display to the public for FREE until the end of the month.

Once Upon A Time is the star of The Center’s Keith Haring Unveiled  exhibition which, well, “unveils” the new restored mural, and offers lots of awesome FREE and cheap Haring-related programming  throughout the month of March.  A calendar of programs can be found HERE, but no matter what, I suggest you get down to The Center and ogle that tricked-out loo in  all of its  glory.  I mean, what better way to celebrate the legacy of an NYC cultural icon, and look at some freaky  art in a freaky place while you’re at it?

Good art isn’t just found at MoMA.  Sometimes it’s also on the tiles surrounding a urinal.  So next time you’re taking a wizz in a public restroom, look around you, and take in those “Hey, Mama” and “For a Good Time, Call…” Sharpie-scrawled bits of graffiti– you could possibly be in the presence of a masterpiece.

Public Viewing of the Keith Haring Mural
March 7th- 31st
FREE
LGBT Community Center (a.k.a. “The Center”)
208 West 13th St. NYC
[West Village]

Photo credit: The Center