From the Street to the Studio: Selections from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection

From the Street to the Studio: Selections from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection tells the story of one of the city’s most influential cultural exports, now housed at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY). From its beginnings on subway cars and city walls to its recognition as a global art movement, graffiti embodies the energy, creativity, and resilience of the city itself.

New York’s age of graffiti—both notorious and celebrated—began in the early 1970s. Using indelible markers and aerosol spray paints, teenagers across the city developed a new form of graffiti writing that emphasized both the quality and quantity of their creations in addition to the message. They began by writing “tags”—stylized signatures that typically combined an alias with the number of the street where they lived—on public and private buildings in their neighborhoods. Soon they expanded to subway stations, buses, and the interiors and exteriors of subway cars. Graffiti quickly proliferated throughout the city, and a new artistic movement was born—one that would come of age over the next twenty years.

Almost simultaneously, youthful artists began venturing into “legitimate” forms of artmaking, creating work on canvas. Among the earliest examples were presented in the landmark 1973 United Graffiti Artists exhibition at Razor Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition demonstrated an emerging acceptance of these artists within the broader New York City art scene—first in alternative spaces such as Fashion Moda in the South Bronx, ABC No Rio in the Lower East Side, and the Times Square Show organized by Collaborative Projects Inc.

By the mid-1980s, alongside the rise of hip-hop culture, graffiti writing was increasingly recognized as an art form in streets, galleries, and even museums around the world. This growing validation occurred despite efforts to eradicate graffiti from New York City’s streets and subways.

This exhibition will feature more than 120 works by many of the artists who had the greatest cultural impact on the development and expansion of the art form, including Keith Haring, Futura 2000, Rammellzee, Dondi, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, Fab Five Freddy, and Chris “Daze” Ellis, among others.

At the heart of the exhibition is the extraordinary collection of Martin Wong (1946–1999)—an artist, mentor, and visionary collector whose foresight preserved hundreds of works that might otherwise have been lost. In 1994, Wong donated his collection to MCNY. Today, the museum serves as the leading repository of this material, stewarding more than 300 works on canvas and paper, fifty-five sketchbooks, as well as ephemera and documentary photography.

The exhibition builds on the resounding success of the MCNY’s landmark exhibitions City as Canvas (2014) and Above Ground (2024), which together drew national and international attention. Featuring newly acquired works and recent commissions, it offers an unprecedented opportunity to showcase the most comprehensive collection of graffiti in the country.