Miami Battle Over Haring Collection Ends with Foundation Victory

The Keith Haring Foundation seems to have won an odd battle in Miami over a show of Haring’s work at the Moore building as part of a publicity event called Haring Miami. The Haring Foundation demanded all but 10 of the 175 works be removed from the show:

The Foundation is pleased to announce that, as an interim step, the organizers of “Haring Miami” have agreed to remove all fake Haring works from the exhibition immediately and to destroy the offending catalogue that illustrated most of the fake works. The Foundation plans to continue to pursue this lawsuit, carrying the message that it will enforce the Foundation’s rights and protect the artist’s legacy in every case of suspected fraud.

But on Friday the Miami Herald said the situation wasn’t clear. Reporting on the controversy before The Haring Foundation released the statement above, the Herald wasn’t sure whether the offending works were simply unauthenticated or declared to be fakes:

Michael Rosen, who co-produced the exhibit with Manny Hernandez, said the two had come to an agreement with the Haring Foundation in which one of the 12 collections in the exhibit would be removed and the rest would be allowed to remain. Rosen said the collection at issue had been removed earlier Friday.

But there is some question on the size of the unauthenticated collection. Rosen said it was a small part of the exhibit, while the collection’s attorney, Stephen Weingrad, said the collection could encompass 100 pieces of work.

Rosen’s attorney, Herman Russomanno III, sent an email to the Miami Herald indicating that the exhibit would continue to show only the 10 pieces of art that were authenticated by the Haring Foundation.

Update: the Keith Haring Foundation contacted us to make it clear that a board member attended the opening and found only 10 of the works to be authentic. Of the other 165 works, “We were shown 43 of them in 2007 (from one collector) and issued “NOT AUTHENTIC” certificates at the time. Many of the other fake works exhibited had been shown to us, but the owners or their representatives chose never to formally submit them for authentication.”

KHF-HM RELEASE

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