Nov 7, 2024, 6:30 PM – 8 PM

Exhibition Walkthrough + Book Signing: Lee Quiñones and Sean Corcoran

Join us for a special conversation and exhibition walkthrough with artist Lee Quiñones and curator Sean Corcoran of the Museum of the City of New York in The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection.

The walkthrough will be followed by a book-signing for Fifty Years of New York Graffiti Art and Beyond, the first monograph of Puerto Rican born artist Lee Quiñones that presents his monumental work and follows his evolution over five decades.

Please note that there will be a pre-tour of the exhibition in ASL (American Sign Language) at 5PM, and ASL interpreters will be available during this event.

Sean Corcoran

Sean Corcoran is the Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. He previously served as Assistant Curator of Photography at George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY. His exhibitions have included City as Canvas, New York City Graffiti from the Martin Wong Collection; Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs ; Brooklyn: The City Within: Photographs by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb; and the upcoming Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection. He has written extensively on art photography, contributing to more than two dozen publications, including essays for Elliott Erwitt: At Home and Around the World (Aperture), and I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York (Thames & Hudson), Loisaida: Street Work 1984-1990 by Tria Giovan (Damiani) and others.
Lee Quiñones

Lee Quiñones is considered the single most influential artist to emerge from the New York subway art movement. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1960, and raised in the Lower East Side, Lee started painting trains in 1974, painted over 120 whole subways cars, and then shifted to a studio-based practice. Lee was instrumental in moving street art above the ground when he created the first handball court mural in 1978. He has had numerous solo shows, first at Galleria Medusa in Rome, Italy in 1979. In 1980, Lee had his first New York show at White Columns, ushering in an important era as the medium of spray paint expanded from public spaces to stationary canvas works. His work was included in “Times Square Show” (1980); “Graffiti Art Success for America at Fashion Moda” (1980); the “New York/New Wave” show (1981) at PS1; and, in “Documenta #7” in Kassel, Germany (1983). His drawings and paintings have been shown in recent years at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (2005), El Museo del Barrio (2010), the Museum of Modern Art (2011), the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (2017), Seoul Museum of Art (2019), the Bronx Museum (2019), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2020) the Gropius Bau (2021) and the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies (2022). He has had solo shows at MoMA PS1, Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, Fun Gallery, Barbara Gladstone, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Lisson Gallery, Barbara Farber, Nicole Klagsbrun, Charlie James, and James Fuentes. He starred in Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 film, “Wild Style,” a blueprint for the burgeoning hip hop movement. He appears in Blondie’s “Rapture” video and the film “Downtown 81.” Quiñones’ paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Perez Art Museum Miami, Groninger Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Major support for The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection is provided by Neuberger Berman Private Wealth; the Outsider Art Fair; Skarstedt, New York; Christie’s Art Finance; and UNIQLO. Special thanks to 2x4 and Human Made.