Brooklyn Public Library: Down the Street – A show of collections about/on Jean-Michel Basquiat Including flyers, pins, signed Pez & ephemera

Installation view: Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency present: Down the Street – A show of collections about/on Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency present:
Down the Street – A show of collections about/on Jean-Michel Basquiat
Including flyers, pins, signed Pez & ephemera
At The Carroll Garden’s Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, 396 Clinton St.

Runs: December 30^th 2017 - March 2018
Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency: A Division of the Brooklyn Pez Museum

Contact: jasonmcleanstudio@gmail.com
https://jasonmclean.weebly.com

Brooklyn, NY, January 2018

For over one hundred years, The Carroll Garden’s Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library dedicates itself to providing social programming for new immigrants to Brooklyn, reading groups for children, and by offering a meeting place for numerous public activities. New York’s beloved artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, spent his childhood in Brooklyn, a couple neighbourhoods over from the library. The micro-exhibition Down The Street, compiled by Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency, acknowledges the dispersed narratives of a community, its library and the artists who make Brooklyn their home. Down The Street signalizes the iconic space and highlights its history of social memory, slowly being forgotten.

Installation view: Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency present: Down the Street – A show of collections about/on Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Installation view: Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency present: Down the Street – A show of collections about/on Jean Michel-Basquiat.

By displaying a multitude of ephemera, projecting a fragmented temporality, Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency celebrate Basquiat. Within the singular display case, Down The Street is an arrangement of posthumous exhibition flyers, one-of-a-kind memorabilia – pezographs (autographs) of Basquiat’s loved ones, and a collection of whimsical objects. Within the memorabilia, you will find signatures from his sisters, Lisanne Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, Glenn O’Brien, Michael Halsband, Jeffrey Deitch and Grand Master Flash. And finally, the centerpiece is a sculptural Lego crown created specifically for Down The Street, by none other than Henry McLean.

Installation view with signed Pez dispensers.

A view of the display. Image courtesy of the artist and Brooklyn Public Library.

The show's poster by artist and curator Jason McLean. 

Henry & Jay’s Collection Agency is a project by Canadian artist, living and working in Carroll Gardens, Jason McLean and his nine-year-old son, Henry. McLean has been compiling this particular collection for well over 25 years, doing so, primarily, through the old fashioned postal system; letter writing and travel. During the Reel Artists Film Festival gala held in Toronto in 2010, Mclean curated a display of Basquiat Ephemera; and in 2015, he lent his voice to the audio guide for the exhibition Jean-Michel Basquait: Now’s The Time at the Art Gallery of Ontario. WM