Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at two large murals — one created 40 years ago by Keith Haring and 1,000 or so helpers, the other installed in the last few weeks on a 29-story apartment building in the Bronx. We’ll also get details on how long the Alexander brothers, who were convicted of running a sex-trafficking conspiracy, will spend in prison.
It was May 1986. Keith Haring and 1,000 teenagers with paintbrushes had been working on a giant banner — torch, crown and all. One of them, looking at the outline of the statue that Haring had painted, thought something was off. “Yo, Keith,” the teenager called out, “the arm goes the other way. It’s crooked. Did you make a mistake?”
“It’s wobbly because sometimes liberty is wobbly,” Haring said.
The mural, 90 feet tall and 30 feet wide, was spread out on the floor of the Javits Convention Center. Haring had told them to think about what liberty meant to them and to draw or write their responses on the image on the floor. The project anticipated the 100th anniversary celebration of the statue a few weeks later; the nonprofit arts group CityKids Foundation, whose logo was drawn by Haring, has had the mural ever since.
Now CityKids is selling limited-edition copies of the mural to raise money for an endowment. “Many arts organizations have survived hand-to-mouth,” said the director and artist Michael Counts, an adviser to CityKids. “That’s become even more challenging in recent years. The idea is taking the assets that an organization has and trying to monetize them in a way that serves the mission and the art and the artist.”
Counts said that said the goal was to bring in $1 million from the sale toward a $10 million target for the endowment. The sale begins at noon today.
Other efforts to fund the endowment will include a documentary in production that will draw on footage from 1986, the year Haring also created the antidrug mural “Crack Is Wack” in an East Harlem playground. CityKids had been started the year before by Laurie Meadoff, a television producer. It now has a partnership with the Lower East Side Girls Club, which has been hosting some of CityKids’ programs.
For the mural, Haring sketched the outline of the statue and left it to the teenagers to fill it in with statements, symbols and comments. “Back then they did works with Keith and Kenny Scharf and other artists,” Counts said. “Philip Glass was at the banner creation, and Yoko Ono, Peter Yarrow and Herbie Hancock.”
Where a 29-story building is a gallery wall
A 29-story building in the Morrisania Air Rights development, on East 158th Street in the Bronx, is serving as the display space for a mural that has just gone up. It took four weeks to install and paint, with volunteers from the nonprofit group ArtBridge on scaffolds, filling in outlines sketched by the Bronx-based Dominican artist Nestor Garcia, who is known as Angurria.
Jon Souza, the program director for ArtBridge, said that Garcia had had “the wise strategy of starting at the top.” By the end of last week, when winds from the post-tropical cyclone Joseph were blowing through, “we were down around the second floor,” Souza said. “A lot more safe and a little less nerve-racking.”
Garcia got the commission after winning a vote among residents of the complex, which is run by the New York City Housing Authority. Souza said that Garcia worked with people in the community to design a mural representing the neighborhood’s past, present and future.
But the size was what counted. “Last year we did a wall that was 15 stories in height, and we did another one at 11 stories,” Souza said. “After this we can look to bigger walls.”
Weather
A partly sunny day is expected today with a high around 63. Cloudy conditions will continue into the night before the sky clears. The low will be 52.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Sunday (All Saints’ Day).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It displaces the community.” — Vincent Michael, on why he opposes the Park Department’s $10 million plan to renovate a corner of Tompkins Square Park and replace its well-worn pull-up bars.
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Alexander brothers are sentenced to 30 years each
Oren and Tal Alexander conquered the Manhattan real estate scene, becoming top-earning agents, and their brother Alon worked for their family’s security business. Prosecutors said they were predators who ran a sex-trafficking conspiracy, and at their trial earlier this year, jurors heard from more than 30 witnesses and watched a video of one of the brothers assaulting a 17-year-old girl.
They were convicted, and on Tuesday, in federal court in Manhattan, each was sentenced to 30 years in prison. All three have continued to deny wrongdoing and are expected to appeal the conviction. Their lawyers spent more than two hours pleading for leniency and asking Judge Valerie Caproni to limit their time behind bars to 15 years each.
Caproni, who had presided over the trial, handed down the sentence after 11 victims addressed the court. A 12th woman asked that her statement be read for her.
“It was like I was being mauled by animals,” said a woman using the pseudonym Isa Brooks. She had testified during trial that she was raped at 16 by Tal and Alon Alexander, as well as two other men, at a party in 2009. “It radically altered the trajectory of my life.”
Another woman, who used the pseudonym Maya Miller in court, said that “what happened to me was not a misunderstanding.” She had testified during the trial that Tal Alexander assaulted her in a shower while she was visiting him in the Hamptons in 2014. “There was no confusion,” she said. “Tal Alexander raped me.”
After arresting the three brothers in late 2024, prosecutors said that they had interviewed more than 60 women who had made allegations against the men. The brothers had initially faced 12 charges, but prosecutors later dropped two counts, telling Caproni that one victim had been so frightened by the defense team’s tactics that she refused to testify. The three brothers still face around two dozen civil lawsuits accusing them of sexual assault and rape.
METROPOLITAN diary
Showtime tips
Dear Diary:
On a quiet Sunday, two young performers entered the A train I was on. Their gymnastics were terrific and inventive, and they had lovely banter.
Most of the riders were politely uninterested, but one guy approached the performers after putting some money in the cap they passed.
He appeared to be asking for pointers on their routine. One of the two demonstrated several times just where he had placed his hands before pulling himself up with his legs straight behind him.
The man tried, tried again and slipped. He couldn’t get his legs off the ground.
The two performers got off at the next stop, and the man who had been talking to them sat down next to me.
“It’s a lot harder than it looks,” he said.
— Marcia Schonzeit
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post Two Murals That Celebrate New York appeared first on New York Times.
