Curator Diego Cortez opened New York/New Wave at P.S.1 in Long Island City on February 15, 1981. The exhibition brought together more than 100 figures from downtown New York's intersecting art, music, graffiti, poetry, and photography scenes, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Fab Five Freddy, Futura 2000, Kenny Scharf, Ray Johnson, Lawrence Weiner, and William S. Burroughs. Coming after Colab's Times Square Show, it transferred a volatile street and club culture into an institutional setting without fully smoothing its edges. The exhibition is especially important for Basquiat, who participated under the SAMO tag and found a larger art-world audience at age 20.
The show helped institutionalize the downtown New York scene and accelerated Basquiat's entry into the art market.
